This week I do not really have a definite thought that I want to go on, so I am going to write about a couple of things that I have been thinking about lately.
This week was Thanksgiving. The main things that people think of when someone says Thanksgiving are: long weekend, turkey, feast, giving thanks, football, etc. Of course everyone is excited for a long weekend, who doesn’t love to sleep in and relax rather than working or going to school? And at Thanksgiving we always have turkey and a big feast, it is almost the biggest thing that Thanksgiving is about, although it probably shouldn’t be, and neither should football. Everybody says at Thanksgiving “I am so thankful for everything I have.” Well, truth be told, most people are thankful for everything they have, or at least most of what they have. So whoever says that they are thankful for everything they have is a good person, because they are really grateful at least in that moment, but it does not seem like their thoughts are really on being thankful for the whole time. They go and watch football or do something else like that. I don’t see anything wrong with this; weekends are meant for having a lot of fun. I am pretty sure though, that while they are watching football they are probably not thinking about how blessed they are. I think that all of us, me included, should try during the next Thanksgiving season and the rest of the year to stop every ten minutes or so and name one thing that we are glad we have. This may be easier said than done, but I hope that we can at least try.
One other thing I have been thinking about is something I have never really realized before, but is sort of interesting if you ponder it for a while. There are people out there that I have never met before that may become my best friend, might teach me something that I will remember forever, might save my life even. I don’t know who they are, but I will meet them someday. I realized that when I was four years old I didn’t know most of my friends that I have now. There were little four year olds running around living their own little lives that would someday become my friends, they were out there and I didn’t even know it. They had their own lives, challenges, and they had good times and bad times just like I did. They didn’t know I existed, I didn’t know they existed, but now we are friends. I know this sounds stupid but I just haven’t realized before that there are people whose lives will cross with mine somehow, either I will move to a new area or they will or I will meet them at a party or something and my life might be different from that point on because I met them. Probably not, but I know that my life would be enormously different had I not moved to Layton seven years ago and met all my current friends. Would my friend’s lives be dramatically different if I hadn’t moved here? What I am saying doesn’t make any sense now that I read over it, but it is just such a weird thing if you do understand it!
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Saturday, November 18, 2006
Politeness
What would happen if everybody went out of their way to be polite? What about helpful? Everybody would be so much happier, the givers AND the receivers. It might inspire the receivers to give more, thus making a cycle of charity. What if everybody didn’t go out of their way to help others, but at least did a good deed when they saw the need of one? Society would still be a much happier, crime free place, because the people that were helped would not need to break the law or starve in order to survive. What if only a few people did good deeds and hardly any went out of their way to help others? Then nation would be a corrupt nation, in my opinion. Luckily, in this rare case, I am not talking about the United States.
I once read an article in a magazine or some other source that had done a politeness test in many cities around the globe. They tested in a few different ways. They did all of their tests outside Starbucks coffee shops, and did three tests. The one I am telling about happened in New York. The first test was to have a reporter come in with a handful of items and order a cup of coffee. Then the reporter would stumble his or her way to the door. The test was to see if a person would hold the door for them. I don’t remember the exact results, but I think that they said that 45% of the people tested held the door for the reporter. The second test was to have the reporter carrying a faulty briefcase and then have it suddenly pop open, strewing papers everywhere. This time the test was to see who would help to pick up the papers. The results were that 30% of the people would stoop to the ground to help them pick up the paper. I do not remember what the third test was, but it had a similar outcome. These were really good results, higher than the rest of the averages of other countries, aside from the fact that apparently people are more likely to help a woman than a man. There were nations above us in politeness, and below us.
I did not just write down the results of a whole experiment for nothing, I wrote them to show how good our nation does in politeness, and how much we could improve. In seminary recently, we watched a video about a man who left almost complete strangers his few meager belongings when he died. Every one of them had hardly ever met him, but through small acts of kindness they greatly influenced his life. It amazed me that I may have influenced someone out there and that they are eternally grateful to me, or hate me because of something I had done many years ago. After I thought about it for a while, I also realized that there were people who would never remember me, yet they had either helped me or hurt me without even knowing that I would remember it to this day. This has made me a little more conscious to what I do to people every day. If we were all more polite, then nobody would have to have bad memories and we may have found the one way to be truly happy, which is through charity.
I once read an article in a magazine or some other source that had done a politeness test in many cities around the globe. They tested in a few different ways. They did all of their tests outside Starbucks coffee shops, and did three tests. The one I am telling about happened in New York. The first test was to have a reporter come in with a handful of items and order a cup of coffee. Then the reporter would stumble his or her way to the door. The test was to see if a person would hold the door for them. I don’t remember the exact results, but I think that they said that 45% of the people tested held the door for the reporter. The second test was to have the reporter carrying a faulty briefcase and then have it suddenly pop open, strewing papers everywhere. This time the test was to see who would help to pick up the papers. The results were that 30% of the people would stoop to the ground to help them pick up the paper. I do not remember what the third test was, but it had a similar outcome. These were really good results, higher than the rest of the averages of other countries, aside from the fact that apparently people are more likely to help a woman than a man. There were nations above us in politeness, and below us.
I did not just write down the results of a whole experiment for nothing, I wrote them to show how good our nation does in politeness, and how much we could improve. In seminary recently, we watched a video about a man who left almost complete strangers his few meager belongings when he died. Every one of them had hardly ever met him, but through small acts of kindness they greatly influenced his life. It amazed me that I may have influenced someone out there and that they are eternally grateful to me, or hate me because of something I had done many years ago. After I thought about it for a while, I also realized that there were people who would never remember me, yet they had either helped me or hurt me without even knowing that I would remember it to this day. This has made me a little more conscious to what I do to people every day. If we were all more polite, then nobody would have to have bad memories and we may have found the one way to be truly happy, which is through charity.
Friday, November 10, 2006
The information age
The information age, that is what we live in, according to the historians anyway. Over the past few years technology has skyrocketed, there are new devices for researching the smallest particle inside and out or exploring the furthest reaches of our galaxy to the maximum. There are laboratories that research every topic we could barely think of, there are even devices that can extend the human life twenty years beyond what was thought to be our maximum life span a quarter of a century ago. But what has come with these spectacular new inventions and what has been left behind?
Everybody knows what an ipod is, it is a little box with a microchip inside capable of holding hundreds hours of music and entertainment. Who doesn’t want an ipod? Nobody. A color television; these three words seem so basic to us now compared to our super advanced computer language and flashy names for our new gadgets. But back only a quarter of a century ago color TV was just barely coming out, it was the most amazing thing in the world, to be able to see color on television! Wow! What will they think of next? How about the basic computer? It didn’t have color, or icons, or games or anything, it was a black screen with white type that could do basic computations, but it was absolutely stunning to people back then. What about Pong? Pong was the very first video game. You moved your control stick back and forth and watched a grainy white ball bounce across the screen to the other end, it was returned, and then you hit that little white, grainy ball back to the other end again. That was the game, the entire game. NOBODY would want to play that game now, with all of our new games with amazing graphics and tons of challenging levels, I know I would much rather play those that hit a grainy white ball back and forth across the screen, but back then, it was amazing! The idea that the movements of your hand on a stick could control where that ball went was totally new and wonderful! These are the good things that have come with the information age, longer lives, amazing entertainment, and much more “fulfilling” lives altogether. But every good thing has its bad things about it too.
I realize that playing Halo 2 is much more fun to play than Pong will ever be, but because Halo 2 has so many levels and is so intriguing to many people (boys) that the people who play it become so mesmerized by it that they may sit there for hours on end and do nothing besides stare at an illuminated screen shooting virtual people and running around in a virtual world. There are many reality TV shows about teenagers that captivate other people (mostly girls). This is probably the reason that we have so many overweight people in our country, without this technology, yes some of us would still sit around and do nothing, but many more of us would, say, go and do something productive! Thus the information age has its downsides.
The examples above send my message, but really what I want to say is that, though I love our new technology, as I’m sure many of us do, we have lost something through our technological breakthroughs. I watched “A Christmas Story” not to long ago, despite it not being near Christmas. It is based in the 50’s, an age without ipods, reality TV or Halo 2. Life seemed so simple back then, if you had some time on your hands you took a walk or went to the ice cream parlor. I am glad I live when I do, but some days I wish that life could be as it used to be, simple and steady.
Everybody knows what an ipod is, it is a little box with a microchip inside capable of holding hundreds hours of music and entertainment. Who doesn’t want an ipod? Nobody. A color television; these three words seem so basic to us now compared to our super advanced computer language and flashy names for our new gadgets. But back only a quarter of a century ago color TV was just barely coming out, it was the most amazing thing in the world, to be able to see color on television! Wow! What will they think of next? How about the basic computer? It didn’t have color, or icons, or games or anything, it was a black screen with white type that could do basic computations, but it was absolutely stunning to people back then. What about Pong? Pong was the very first video game. You moved your control stick back and forth and watched a grainy white ball bounce across the screen to the other end, it was returned, and then you hit that little white, grainy ball back to the other end again. That was the game, the entire game. NOBODY would want to play that game now, with all of our new games with amazing graphics and tons of challenging levels, I know I would much rather play those that hit a grainy white ball back and forth across the screen, but back then, it was amazing! The idea that the movements of your hand on a stick could control where that ball went was totally new and wonderful! These are the good things that have come with the information age, longer lives, amazing entertainment, and much more “fulfilling” lives altogether. But every good thing has its bad things about it too.
I realize that playing Halo 2 is much more fun to play than Pong will ever be, but because Halo 2 has so many levels and is so intriguing to many people (boys) that the people who play it become so mesmerized by it that they may sit there for hours on end and do nothing besides stare at an illuminated screen shooting virtual people and running around in a virtual world. There are many reality TV shows about teenagers that captivate other people (mostly girls). This is probably the reason that we have so many overweight people in our country, without this technology, yes some of us would still sit around and do nothing, but many more of us would, say, go and do something productive! Thus the information age has its downsides.
The examples above send my message, but really what I want to say is that, though I love our new technology, as I’m sure many of us do, we have lost something through our technological breakthroughs. I watched “A Christmas Story” not to long ago, despite it not being near Christmas. It is based in the 50’s, an age without ipods, reality TV or Halo 2. Life seemed so simple back then, if you had some time on your hands you took a walk or went to the ice cream parlor. I am glad I live when I do, but some days I wish that life could be as it used to be, simple and steady.
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Some people disgust me
Sometimes I look at someone and say, “Why don’t they try a little harder?” I realize, according to our counselors, that Utah has an excellent high school graduation rate, but every single day I think I could pick out a new person at our school alone who gets bad grades, and could get good ones if they tried even a tiny bit.
There is a myth at our school; at least it is a myth in my mind, that getting bad grades is “cool.” In my opinion, if you get bad grades because you didn’t try in class, you look like a lazy slug. If you get bad grades because you are happy to do work in class but homework is a no no, then you do no have my respect, but at least you are somewhat motivated. If you get bad grades on purpose however, then I have absolutely no respect for you or the person you are choosing to be. My only exception to having bad grades is if you really do give every assignment and test your very very best and still can’t get anything decent out of it, then in this case and only this case will I take your side of the bad grade issue.
Trust me, I think that every teacher and most of our peers would agree with me that if you try to get bad grades so you can improve your social image, your efforts are in vain. You don’t look cool by looking stupid, maybe to some of your “cool” friends, but they are getting just as bad of grades as you.
I know of many specific examples, but this is one of the really ridiculous ones. There is this boy in my science class, this certain kid manages to keep a C average, which is not bad but it is much less than he could do. He has more potential in him, I know because he was in my second grade class and was one of the kids that always raised his hand and got the answer right. These were his exact words after getting an A on a quiz a few weeks ago; “What!? I got an A? I didn’t even try! Now I look like a nerd!” I couldn’t believe it; he was disappointed that he got a good grade! He was so worried about his social image that he couldn’t stand to improve his grade that will count toward plans for the rest of his life! Chances were nobody, including his friends, would have even know about his good score unless he had shouted it out to the whole class. People like him make me scared for the future of our earth.
I am sure that every one of us in our honors English class at least has enough sense to realize how stupid people like him are. Hopefully it will be the people like us in our advanced classes and not people like him that will eventually run major companies and become president and things like that. Most likely they WILL be people like us, since people like him will be the ones working night and day to get enough money to go back to college and get a better life for themselves while the rest of us, will working at successful jobs because we decided early on that education does matter. Thank you, one and all who actually work at succeeding in life and not sitting on your butt waiting for something to come that never will, the day when stupid people like those who I have mentioned many times in the above paragraphs will no longer exist and everybody will work hard for what they really deserve in life.
There is a myth at our school; at least it is a myth in my mind, that getting bad grades is “cool.” In my opinion, if you get bad grades because you didn’t try in class, you look like a lazy slug. If you get bad grades because you are happy to do work in class but homework is a no no, then you do no have my respect, but at least you are somewhat motivated. If you get bad grades on purpose however, then I have absolutely no respect for you or the person you are choosing to be. My only exception to having bad grades is if you really do give every assignment and test your very very best and still can’t get anything decent out of it, then in this case and only this case will I take your side of the bad grade issue.
Trust me, I think that every teacher and most of our peers would agree with me that if you try to get bad grades so you can improve your social image, your efforts are in vain. You don’t look cool by looking stupid, maybe to some of your “cool” friends, but they are getting just as bad of grades as you.
I know of many specific examples, but this is one of the really ridiculous ones. There is this boy in my science class, this certain kid manages to keep a C average, which is not bad but it is much less than he could do. He has more potential in him, I know because he was in my second grade class and was one of the kids that always raised his hand and got the answer right. These were his exact words after getting an A on a quiz a few weeks ago; “What!? I got an A? I didn’t even try! Now I look like a nerd!” I couldn’t believe it; he was disappointed that he got a good grade! He was so worried about his social image that he couldn’t stand to improve his grade that will count toward plans for the rest of his life! Chances were nobody, including his friends, would have even know about his good score unless he had shouted it out to the whole class. People like him make me scared for the future of our earth.
I am sure that every one of us in our honors English class at least has enough sense to realize how stupid people like him are. Hopefully it will be the people like us in our advanced classes and not people like him that will eventually run major companies and become president and things like that. Most likely they WILL be people like us, since people like him will be the ones working night and day to get enough money to go back to college and get a better life for themselves while the rest of us, will working at successful jobs because we decided early on that education does matter. Thank you, one and all who actually work at succeeding in life and not sitting on your butt waiting for something to come that never will, the day when stupid people like those who I have mentioned many times in the above paragraphs will no longer exist and everybody will work hard for what they really deserve in life.
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Another thing to be thankful for
America is clothing hungry. Let me explain, many people in the United States own more than twenty pairs of clothes. Now if you ask me, ten or twelve is average, while thirteen is pushing it and seven or eight is maybe not quite enough. Still at school I see people that have any assortment of odd clothing mixed and matched outfits. This is not bad of course, but why do we need to have so many choices? Our ancestors who came to America came with “only the clothes on my back and the food in my stomach.” They made it through their experience. By today’s standards this would mean that you were dirty and a social outcast, I have to agree with this, for if you wore the same clothes for weeks until you could find another pair cheap I would imagine that you may not smell or look very good. This is not my point, however. Despite the need of hygiene, they still got along just fine in their voyage to America, or else none of us would be here at this present time.
Here is another example. This is a corny example but it once again proves my point. Remember Dobby the house elf from the Harry Potter series that I am sure that most of us have read? Now he did not even have a pair of clothes! He got along fine (Ok, not fine, he had an evil owner, but he made it in only a pillowcase). He shows that even in extreme poverty people could make it through with the most meager of apparel.
Last year my family had some friends from France come and stay with us for a few days. I could not help but notice that they wore the exact same outfit every single day; it sort of grossed me out. When I asked my mom why they did not change their clothes, she replied that in France they routinely wear the same clothes every day until they get a stain or until they are visibly dirty. This seems really gross to me, my whole life I have been raised in a home where after you have worn something, you wash it, but in France I guess it is not like that. I guess that it does not make much difference to them if they have already worn the clothes, which goes to show that different countries have very different customs than others.
Now please, if you are reading this, don't think that I am saying we should all go and throw away all of our clothes but one pair, or that we should walk around in pillowcases. That would be really, really gross. I am just saying that in numerous cases other beings have been alright without twenty pairs of clothes. Also don't think that I am encouraging us to wear our clothes four times before we wash them, that is also gross. Just be thankful for the clothes we have and not be constantly in the want for more.
So next time you go to the store and decide to spend your recently earned twenty dollars on a great new shirt, just imagine yourself next to Dobby the house elf and consider how much you really want that shirt, and if you really do want it, then buy it by all means. If you don’t really need it, then don’t buy it. The choice is simple as that.
Here is another example. This is a corny example but it once again proves my point. Remember Dobby the house elf from the Harry Potter series that I am sure that most of us have read? Now he did not even have a pair of clothes! He got along fine (Ok, not fine, he had an evil owner, but he made it in only a pillowcase). He shows that even in extreme poverty people could make it through with the most meager of apparel.
Last year my family had some friends from France come and stay with us for a few days. I could not help but notice that they wore the exact same outfit every single day; it sort of grossed me out. When I asked my mom why they did not change their clothes, she replied that in France they routinely wear the same clothes every day until they get a stain or until they are visibly dirty. This seems really gross to me, my whole life I have been raised in a home where after you have worn something, you wash it, but in France I guess it is not like that. I guess that it does not make much difference to them if they have already worn the clothes, which goes to show that different countries have very different customs than others.
Now please, if you are reading this, don't think that I am saying we should all go and throw away all of our clothes but one pair, or that we should walk around in pillowcases. That would be really, really gross. I am just saying that in numerous cases other beings have been alright without twenty pairs of clothes. Also don't think that I am encouraging us to wear our clothes four times before we wash them, that is also gross. Just be thankful for the clothes we have and not be constantly in the want for more.
So next time you go to the store and decide to spend your recently earned twenty dollars on a great new shirt, just imagine yourself next to Dobby the house elf and consider how much you really want that shirt, and if you really do want it, then buy it by all means. If you don’t really need it, then don’t buy it. The choice is simple as that.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
A very interesting person indeed...
I have this very interesting friend.To protect her identity, we will call her Cass Jones. Many people may consider her “weird” or “crazy,” some people may even say “she is really strange sometimes.” To me though, I consider her to be all of the above. It's what makes her so much fun to be around, and such a good friend! She has many interesting things about her, to name a few she has Asian background, another is that she is very talented in many ways, and another is her strange interests and the powerful urge inside which must be what must make her love to annoy people, but the most amazing thing is that through all this she is still one of the best friends I have ever had.
Both of Cass' parents come from Asia, her mom from Vietnam and her dad from China. She and her sister have a cool way of life, theirs is like this, they speak fluent Vietnamese at home, and in the Jones' house, they eat lots of very cool food that I had never tried before like dried squid, fried shrimp, and sweet rice that her mom cooks and buys from Salt Lake. She has also become enthralled with Asian actors and actresses, with everything she writes and owns, comes something to do with Asian movie stars, or her favorite Chinese TV series. Her series' stories are normally based on some sort of war hero, I watched one with her one time and it was pretty cool. Her house is cool too, her houses' yard is covered in roses and other cool landscaping.This summer all the Joneses went to Vietnam for a month to visit her grandmother who had previously lived with them for a few years. She says it was a very cool experience and made a lot of new Vietnamese friends while there. While already being bilingual, she has many other talents also.
Speckofsand is one of the most talented people I know. If I had to pick a brilliant mind from my school, hers would be it. For one thing, she has had a 4.0 every term in junior high so far except for one term where she had a 3.952 and was really mad about it, so in other words she has an amazing brain. She is also trilingual, not only does she speak fluent English and Vietnamese as I have mentioned before she is also learning french in school. Whenever there is an assignment in school that involves a lot of looking things up she is awesome and speeds through it with ease. She has amazing handwriting and isn't bad at cartooning. But I believe that perhaps her most amazing talent is her piano skills. Cass' piano books songs that she plays from have very hard songs. She can play dozens of tough songs on piano and have over ten of them memorized; I think that this is really amazing. She doesn't ever make mistakes either, or hardly ever at least. Of course, every amazing person has their strange sides too.
I think Cass must have some invisible yet powerful urge inside her that makes it irresistible for her to pass up the chance to poke someone. She might hide one of their belongings, or step on their heels, or tickle them, or scare them and make them shriek very loudly, or tie them to a desk by their shoelaces when they aren’t looking, or even recently she started keeping a journal in which she records the date and time that one of her friends did something weird or got tongue tied; the list goes on and on. Of these qualities, I think her most tortuous tactic is that she loves to play with people’s minds. Many a time I have talked to her and she will say “I know something about you, but I’m not supposed to tell.” And then she will grin her wide, cheesy grin and walk away very smugly. It is its aggravating sneakiness of her torture that really amazes me. Who doesn’t go crazy trying to figure out what someone else knows about them? Other times on the internet someone will be chatting with her, she will say something nonsensical like saying something in an abbreviated form, and when the person she’s talking to asks what it means she says “Oh, I might tell you someday.” Yes, Cass loves to annoy people. Despite her strange habits, Cass is still a very good friend.
Cass was my first friend when I moved to this area eight years ago, and has remained one of my very best friends ever since then. She is so much fun to be with, she has a great sense of humor, and she is always laughing if you can get her in the mood. She is always ready to do any activity when we do things together. She is a good listener and usually has some very enthralling stories to tell also.
Cass is a very interesting person, she has Asian ancestry and family, she is really talented in many ways, she loves to annoy people, and nonetheless remains a really awesome friend. I think that my life and many of the rest of our lives might be pretty dull without her there to stir things up a bit, so I am glad that she is here to make things interesting for me!
Both of Cass' parents come from Asia, her mom from Vietnam and her dad from China. She and her sister have a cool way of life, theirs is like this, they speak fluent Vietnamese at home, and in the Jones' house, they eat lots of very cool food that I had never tried before like dried squid, fried shrimp, and sweet rice that her mom cooks and buys from Salt Lake. She has also become enthralled with Asian actors and actresses, with everything she writes and owns, comes something to do with Asian movie stars, or her favorite Chinese TV series. Her series' stories are normally based on some sort of war hero, I watched one with her one time and it was pretty cool. Her house is cool too, her houses' yard is covered in roses and other cool landscaping.This summer all the Joneses went to Vietnam for a month to visit her grandmother who had previously lived with them for a few years. She says it was a very cool experience and made a lot of new Vietnamese friends while there. While already being bilingual, she has many other talents also.
Speckofsand is one of the most talented people I know. If I had to pick a brilliant mind from my school, hers would be it. For one thing, she has had a 4.0 every term in junior high so far except for one term where she had a 3.952 and was really mad about it, so in other words she has an amazing brain. She is also trilingual, not only does she speak fluent English and Vietnamese as I have mentioned before she is also learning french in school. Whenever there is an assignment in school that involves a lot of looking things up she is awesome and speeds through it with ease. She has amazing handwriting and isn't bad at cartooning. But I believe that perhaps her most amazing talent is her piano skills. Cass' piano books songs that she plays from have very hard songs. She can play dozens of tough songs on piano and have over ten of them memorized; I think that this is really amazing. She doesn't ever make mistakes either, or hardly ever at least. Of course, every amazing person has their strange sides too.
I think Cass must have some invisible yet powerful urge inside her that makes it irresistible for her to pass up the chance to poke someone. She might hide one of their belongings, or step on their heels, or tickle them, or scare them and make them shriek very loudly, or tie them to a desk by their shoelaces when they aren’t looking, or even recently she started keeping a journal in which she records the date and time that one of her friends did something weird or got tongue tied; the list goes on and on. Of these qualities, I think her most tortuous tactic is that she loves to play with people’s minds. Many a time I have talked to her and she will say “I know something about you, but I’m not supposed to tell.” And then she will grin her wide, cheesy grin and walk away very smugly. It is its aggravating sneakiness of her torture that really amazes me. Who doesn’t go crazy trying to figure out what someone else knows about them? Other times on the internet someone will be chatting with her, she will say something nonsensical like saying something in an abbreviated form, and when the person she’s talking to asks what it means she says “Oh, I might tell you someday.” Yes, Cass loves to annoy people. Despite her strange habits, Cass is still a very good friend.
Cass was my first friend when I moved to this area eight years ago, and has remained one of my very best friends ever since then. She is so much fun to be with, she has a great sense of humor, and she is always laughing if you can get her in the mood. She is always ready to do any activity when we do things together. She is a good listener and usually has some very enthralling stories to tell also.
Cass is a very interesting person, she has Asian ancestry and family, she is really talented in many ways, she loves to annoy people, and nonetheless remains a really awesome friend. I think that my life and many of the rest of our lives might be pretty dull without her there to stir things up a bit, so I am glad that she is here to make things interesting for me!
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Sometimes you have to wonder...
Sometimes I wonder why the world is the way it is. Now I am not going to complain about that weird, horrible, or otherwise completely bogus earth we live on as I have for my many past entries in here, I was just wondering, why is the world the way it is? Why is the sky blue, I mean sure, we learn in science that it is because light is reflected off of the particles in the air and the light comes back to us blue? (For those of you who still do not understand this, do not try to figure it out, it still makes no sense to me.) What about the english language? Who ever came up with the word dog? What if they were called cat instead? Now wouldn't that be weird? I wonder if in the days of the cavemen some huge caveman saw a dog, grunted, pointed to it and said "dog," and ever since then we have called them dogs. But hey, we also call mangy human beings dogs, such as "ye scurvy dogs!" In pirate times. Since when did people have anything to do with dogs and since when do they look like them? Once again I am not trying to bash whoever uses the word "dog" when they see a mangy person, but hey; really; where did it come from? My best guess is that someone was a little loopy and decided to call their friend a dog since they had not bathed for many weeks, or something like that.
Here is something else that goes along with what I am saying. I got an email a few weeks ago that had a few "incidents" on it. By incident I mean that some people are so stupid they just can not function in life. Here is one of the stories on the email.
Mrs. Grazinski purchased a brand new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On her first trip home, (from an OU football game), having driven onto the freeway, she set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the driver's seat to go into the back & make herself a sandwich. Not surprisingly, the RV left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Mrs.Grazinski sued Winnebago for not advising her in the owner's manual that she couldn't actually do this. The jury awarded her $1,750,000. plus a new motor home.
Come on, who is seriously so stupid that they sue a company after they stopped driving their vehicle on a high speed road? The woman in this email is relying on her own stupidity to earn her money. Now I for one would rather not have that sort of reputation. Well, I guess our earth has a few loose screws and they come in the form of people like this.
Ok so i'm starting to sound negative again and i'm really trying not to so let me just say that I sort of like having a few real idiots out there, because it makes the rest of us look so smart! And it gives us something to laugh at. Luckily, most of us have our heads screwed on right or else our whole planet would crash and burn.
Here is something else that goes along with what I am saying. I got an email a few weeks ago that had a few "incidents" on it. By incident I mean that some people are so stupid they just can not function in life. Here is one of the stories on the email.
Mrs. Grazinski purchased a brand new 32-foot Winnebago motor home. On her first trip home, (from an OU football game), having driven onto the freeway, she set the cruise control at 70 mph and calmly left the driver's seat to go into the back & make herself a sandwich. Not surprisingly, the RV left the freeway, crashed and overturned. Mrs.Grazinski sued Winnebago for not advising her in the owner's manual that she couldn't actually do this. The jury awarded her $1,750,000. plus a new motor home.
Come on, who is seriously so stupid that they sue a company after they stopped driving their vehicle on a high speed road? The woman in this email is relying on her own stupidity to earn her money. Now I for one would rather not have that sort of reputation. Well, I guess our earth has a few loose screws and they come in the form of people like this.
Ok so i'm starting to sound negative again and i'm really trying not to so let me just say that I sort of like having a few real idiots out there, because it makes the rest of us look so smart! And it gives us something to laugh at. Luckily, most of us have our heads screwed on right or else our whole planet would crash and burn.
Sunday, October 08, 2006
Crazy lifestyle
Every season my family and I have different projects. We have recently started to make the transition from summer projects to our autumn projects. I love this time of year, but things can get a little hectic around my house. One major thing that we do as autumn arrives is put up our Halloween decorations, this includes every wall hanging in the shape of a witch, skeleton or goblin; every pumpkin shaped figurine must find a place in our living room; and every stick on leaf must be firmly pasted on our window. We did all this last week and had loads of fun doing so, but it took us three days to complete all of it. That is how much stuff we have.
Another thing my family is doing this year is we are building a new deck in our backyard, not an easy task as I have recently learned. It is even harder since we are trying to get the whole thing put up by winter so we don't have to work in the snow. I thought that to build a deck it was basically digging a few holes, sticking a few posts in the ground, measuring a few feet, then laying boards. I was completely wrong in that assumption. To make a deck, it involves hours of digging holes, pouring concrete into the holes, measuring and re-measuring different boards, cutting those boards, lifting those heavy boards, and screwing in hundreds of tiny screws. Through all our hard work, which took place for many hours on Saturday in the rain, we have the frame of a deck! It actually looks like all those boards and holes and screws will become a deck! So that was our great accomplishment of the week.
Here is another thing we do every year, we can various fruits and put them in our storage room to enjoy for winter, and for most of them we all work together in the canning process to make it a short experience. Grape juice is the exception, only my mom knows how to make grape juice. So for the past two and a half weeks she has stood in the kitchen and made grape juice whenever she gets the chance. I absolutely love grape juice so I am really glad she does this. All in all, we have a ton of autumn projects as you can see from these past few paragraphs.
Ok so this is off topic, but to me, when I view the school year, I see it in little increments, there is the September increment, that one is the beginning, the part that I look back on and say “wow, I did not know what I was doing back then, I was still getting used to the new grade, new teachers and all together going to school again.” During the September time period it also feels like the beginning of school will never end and the time where you are “starting school” will fade away and the time of being “in school” will finally begin. Thank goodness it is October! In my odd way of looking at a school year, we have finally advanced from the beginning time frame to the middle time frame, May being the end time frame. I am soooo glad that we are now in school, not starting it. Autumn is fun, but to me it’s mostly fun when the beginning is through and I have adjusted to the stuff it brings in place of summer.
Another thing my family is doing this year is we are building a new deck in our backyard, not an easy task as I have recently learned. It is even harder since we are trying to get the whole thing put up by winter so we don't have to work in the snow. I thought that to build a deck it was basically digging a few holes, sticking a few posts in the ground, measuring a few feet, then laying boards. I was completely wrong in that assumption. To make a deck, it involves hours of digging holes, pouring concrete into the holes, measuring and re-measuring different boards, cutting those boards, lifting those heavy boards, and screwing in hundreds of tiny screws. Through all our hard work, which took place for many hours on Saturday in the rain, we have the frame of a deck! It actually looks like all those boards and holes and screws will become a deck! So that was our great accomplishment of the week.
Here is another thing we do every year, we can various fruits and put them in our storage room to enjoy for winter, and for most of them we all work together in the canning process to make it a short experience. Grape juice is the exception, only my mom knows how to make grape juice. So for the past two and a half weeks she has stood in the kitchen and made grape juice whenever she gets the chance. I absolutely love grape juice so I am really glad she does this. All in all, we have a ton of autumn projects as you can see from these past few paragraphs.
Ok so this is off topic, but to me, when I view the school year, I see it in little increments, there is the September increment, that one is the beginning, the part that I look back on and say “wow, I did not know what I was doing back then, I was still getting used to the new grade, new teachers and all together going to school again.” During the September time period it also feels like the beginning of school will never end and the time where you are “starting school” will fade away and the time of being “in school” will finally begin. Thank goodness it is October! In my odd way of looking at a school year, we have finally advanced from the beginning time frame to the middle time frame, May being the end time frame. I am soooo glad that we are now in school, not starting it. Autumn is fun, but to me it’s mostly fun when the beginning is through and I have adjusted to the stuff it brings in place of summer.
Sunday, October 01, 2006
Count yourself lucky
We are so lucky to live in this century. What are the odds that of the billions of people to ever live on this planet our speck of life happened to be born into this century? Let me state a few examples of why we are so lucky. Take the washing machine for example, one thousand years ago; you had to wash every item of clothing or anything by hand on a wooden washboard if you even had that. This also is in the conclusion that you had more than one outfit. I read somewhere that at the beginning of summer you took a single bath, washed your one pair of clothes, or if you were lucky, you put on your new pair, and then were sewed into them. By sewed into, I mean that the stitches on the clothes were made while you were wearing them, leaving no room to get in or out of them again. In this century, we complain that we do not have enough, so we buy more, and we wash them after every time we wear them, whether they were worn for three hours or a whole day. All we have to do to wash them is stick them in the big white box, add some soap, and push a button.
Here is another example, if you needed food in one thousand AD, then you butchered, or grew most of it yourself, you only went to the market to get the necessary items you could not get for yourself. You did not have much variety either, you got what you got, and if you did not like it then you went hungry. Now, you go to the grocery store and have whole racks of different kinds of cheese, beans, grain, even milk. Who ever heard of four kinds of milk back then? No one. And we did not toil in the fields for months to get it either, maybe if we were farmers, but even they have new machinery to make things easier on themselves. No, to buy our groceries, we sit in air conditioned offices and pushed buttons with our fingers. I think that they would have gladly switched with us. Granted, our jobs are hard on our brains, we have had training to do them. I think that it may have done us good to work in the fields for months on end. Perhaps we would have less obesity in America if we did.
Ok, I do not want to get really negative or anything so I will stop there. I just think that we should recognize how lucky we are to live where we do, when we live, and how we live our lives. Our new gadgets make life a piece of cake compared to how things used to be, and we want more more more. Our new amazing gadgets also deplete the worlds’ resources, we can have our gadgets, since they have helped the human race survive, but would it be too much to ask to try and conserve electricity and turn off our lights? Or maybe to walk to our neighbors house instead of drive? Please don’t think that I’m a tree hugger because I’m not, but I just want to give anyone who reads this a few things to think on.
Here is another example, if you needed food in one thousand AD, then you butchered, or grew most of it yourself, you only went to the market to get the necessary items you could not get for yourself. You did not have much variety either, you got what you got, and if you did not like it then you went hungry. Now, you go to the grocery store and have whole racks of different kinds of cheese, beans, grain, even milk. Who ever heard of four kinds of milk back then? No one. And we did not toil in the fields for months to get it either, maybe if we were farmers, but even they have new machinery to make things easier on themselves. No, to buy our groceries, we sit in air conditioned offices and pushed buttons with our fingers. I think that they would have gladly switched with us. Granted, our jobs are hard on our brains, we have had training to do them. I think that it may have done us good to work in the fields for months on end. Perhaps we would have less obesity in America if we did.
Ok, I do not want to get really negative or anything so I will stop there. I just think that we should recognize how lucky we are to live where we do, when we live, and how we live our lives. Our new gadgets make life a piece of cake compared to how things used to be, and we want more more more. Our new amazing gadgets also deplete the worlds’ resources, we can have our gadgets, since they have helped the human race survive, but would it be too much to ask to try and conserve electricity and turn off our lights? Or maybe to walk to our neighbors house instead of drive? Please don’t think that I’m a tree hugger because I’m not, but I just want to give anyone who reads this a few things to think on.
Saturday, September 23, 2006
Old age is not a curse
Why is everyone these days scared of getting old? As far as I can tell the only time we are excited to age is when we are kids. When you get to the teenage stage you are happy right where you are and do not want to leave it, and then when you turn eighteen you start doing things that only teenagers should be doing, like wearing miniskirts. It is like we are groping for the days when we all had not a care in the world except which party we were going to go to next, or so it seems. Who would not love to be carefree their whole lives? We all love to party, it is plain to see why we want to stay young forever. But the fact is, we will not. Instead of dressing like we are all sixteen and going to parties every night, how about we dress our age? I know this is easy for me to say, since I am still in my sweet fourteens, and having an easy life aside from the mountains of homework we get from school (I guess it is not that bad), but I think that those fifty year old ladies who dress in sun dresses even though they do not have the bodies for them and should have retired them years ago are just putting on a show for the world. Not many women or men can truthfully say that they can still fit into their college jeans. It is the sad truth, and we are all going to have to accept it eventually, whether we like it or not, we will age. And I do not think that that is such a bad thing really, once you are twenty or so you can get married and go on newlywed trips, which sounds like a ton of fun if you ask me. You could also have a family, which sounds like quite an adventure to me, even if it is not a senior trip. And once all those kids are grown you can go back to taking trips with your spouse and you can join those health clubs and go to parties with adults just like in high school. Life has so many different stages that it does not really matter which one you are in, you can still have fun and live the way you would want to. Of course there is the fact that as you age you get that aching back and those weak knees, everyone has those. In this I would say count yourself lucky, at least you are alive. If it you had been born five hundred years ago then you would be dead by the age thirty five. I hope that eventually I will be able to make the switch from youth to adult without too much trauma and pouting. Hardly anyone pouts, but I have seen a few. I also hope that I will not have one of those mid life crisis’s and go berserk like some people do. I think that old age is a golden age, by the time your eighty you have gained so much wisdom you could be a great scholar or something. I think what this all comes down to is that old age is not a curse, it may be the best time of your life, so don’t dread it, look forward to it with as much enthusiasm as you can muster.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Rich Americans vs. Rest of the World
So recently I was thinking about the state of our earth. Pollution, overfishing, animals going extinct, the list can go on and on. But then I thought, why is the earth like this? I recently read a graph in my Geography class at school that showed that The United States of America uses 40% of the oil the world mines each year, while the rest of the world put together uses the rest. We alone, one country in a big earth, is using 40% of the oil on our earth. It's not a wonder that we are getting global warming, and the people to blame first is ourselves. As for overfishing and extiction, we as Americans are not the only cause, but we are as much to blame or more for paying large amounts of money to eat exotic fish and animals. What could be done to help this situation? Animals are going extinct because poor villagers in faraway parts of the world are hunting them to extinction. "Stop hunting those animals you greedy villagers!" We say, bundled up in warm clothes eating at a Red Lobster restaurant. What we do not realize, is that if it were us in that situation, with our own children crying with aching stomachs because they have not eaten more than one meal a day for their entire lives, them freezing to death at night because they have no blankets in winter, we too would say "hmph, I think I will eat whatever I want." I mean what do you expect those villagers to say? "Oh ok, we will stop hunting those animals for food and blankets like you rich Americans tell us to, it does not really matter if we starve to death in a month or two or freeze to death tonight, we will just think of the happy endagered turkey that is wandering free getting plump and ready for some animal to chomp on, rather than on my table with its' feathers in a down pillow and my children fed." I think we can all see the point. How about we try this, we will all trade places with the villagers from Africa and Central America. They will come live in our million dollar air conditioned homes and eat Mcdonalds Supersize burgers and watch NFL football games on big screen televisions with surround sound and send their kids to amazing universitys and take vacation cruises to the south pacific ocean. Meanwhile, we can go live in one hundred and nine degree muggy heat near the equator in a dense rainforest fighting to survive against the elements and hunger. We will live in straw shacks or three foot tall packing crates and if it rains, it pours, and that packing crate, I am afraid, does not have much sealing in the roof, and we will get wet. So I think that I have made my point which is that it is pathetic how America can live in huge amounts of wealth while many other parts of the world are living, if you can call it living, in poverty. Now, we are aware of a problem, what can be done to solve it? Well for one thing, I am sure that every person who reads this will say: "This is awful! She is right! We need to do something, the next time i'm at a press conference, I will tell president Bush that he needs to end world hunger." THAT is NOT ENOUGH. Anybody can do that, and I am 100% certain that president Bush aready knows that world hunger must end. He is only one man, even if he has lots of power, he can not provide entire countrys with food and shelter. How about we help him? What an idea! How about we go through our storage rooms and pick out a few things that we do not really need and put them in a box and ship it to a needy country? Lets do the same with blankets, good timber for houses, and medicine. If you have time and money go over there yourself! Maybe, just maybe, if we do things like this, everything that is mentioned here will not be a reality in ten or twenty years. We have some pretty cool things around us, we have the biggest houses, and the tiniest cell phones which hve every gadget you can think of rolled into one, but how about we try helping everyone else around first?
Thursday, September 07, 2006
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