You Woke the Bears! Why did you do that?

Earlier tonight I watched the movie Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, the main actor being Will Ferrell.  The movie is about a guy named Ron Burgundy who is the top-rated anchorman in San Diego in the 1970s. Then when feminism marches into the newsroom in the form of ambitious newswoman Veronica Corningstone.  Ron is willing to play along at first-as long as Veronica stays in her place, covering cat fashion shows, cooking, and other "female" interests.  But that is not what she wants, she refuses to settle for only being eye candy for the men at the station, she steps behind the news desk and fights for her right to be a news anchor. 

In Ron's eyes, Veronica Coringstone is not so much the studio's most welcome addition. Ron and Veronica become passoinate with each other early in the movie but Veronica doesn't want their relationship to jeoprodize her chances of becoming a news anchor.  After Veronica pays her dues covering the female-oriented fluffy pieces, the ambitious Veronica sets her eyes on the news desk; more specifically, on Ron's seat behind it.  Ron doesn't take the threat lightly, and not long before the rival newscasters are engaged in a very personal battle of the sexes. 

Even though this movie is supposed to be a comedy, I think that it has a very important message behind the comedy.  The message is that even though there are things that are changing throughout the world, you need to learn how to accept them and not try to fight them.  If you try to fight them, it will more than likely end up in the favor of what you are trying to fight.  If you just step back and embrace it, everything will work out for you as well as everyone else.

Once Upon a...I mean StumbleUpon a...

A website that I have found very important in my procrastination is StumbleUpon, it is a website that has you pick things that are interesting to you and then generates random websites that match up with the things that are of interest to you.  I really enjoy this website; I have been able to fnd a lot of cool things while procrastinating my homework and writing papers.  I have found some pretty cool games while stumbling, along with really good quotes and things that I could also blog about. 

There is a Thumbs Up bottom that you can click on if you like the page that you are on.  It is true, I think, that the traffic that comes from most social media sites is basically all or nothing.  The popular pages may receive thousands of visitors.  There’s really no middle ground in the number of visitors that a page receives. Even if only a few people give the page a thumbs up and maybe a review or something, it will cause a significant amount of traffic for that page.

I think that StumbleUpon is a great site for networking, it builds on social media sites.  It is easy to add friends and keep them, join and be active in groups and even send email to other people directly from StumbleUpon.  Even though i don't used the StumbleUpon message system to communicate with people I am friends with, I hear that it is a good way to keep in touch with the friends that you make on StumbleUpon.  The networking that I’ve been able to do on StumbleUpon has been very valuable, it has helped me meet some very interesting people and understand what they are trying to do with themselves.  StumbleUpon is a close second behind Facebook for networking, but that is more because I am in college and the majority of the people I know and try to keep in touch with are on there.

Those Never Left Behind

The article "Final Salute" is a story in the Rocky Mountain News.  It is a story that is pretty hard to get through. I can't think about having to go to the doors of fallen Marines and telling their families of their child's death, it has to be so hard to do something like that.  When I think about the U.S. Marines, I think about yelling, guns, ships in the water, and the phrase "Oorah," but after reading through the "Final Salute" my mind has definitely changed. This article is about the men whose job it is to give the grave news to the families of their fallen soldier(s).  Not only does this article show what these select few do almost everyday, it also helps the reader to experience what is going on in the hearts of the men and the families.

I don't think I would be able to know that going into work everyday is going to tell families how their children have died.  I think that this article was interesting as well as emoional, these men had to share the worst news any military news family could ever recieve.  I think that is is an amazing thing for the men to stay with the families and be there for them when they needed it, no matter how long they needed it.  Time is not a problem for these military men.  There was a part in the article that was tough for me to get through, it was the part about the twenty three year old widow, who spent her last night at the resting grounds of her husband’s body before he was buried.  She talk about how she had one of the best night’s sleep, but had felt bad because she had taken that night's sleep for granted.  I know that it is hard to let someone close to you go, I have done it with four of my close friends.  I never got to say good bye or even tell them how I felt about them, they were there and then they were gone.  It hurts.  I think that it would hurt so much more if my spouse had died, knowing that I never got to tell them how much I loved them before they died.  It would haunt me for the rest of my life.

I think that this was a interesting article to read, it is good for non-military people to understand what the men and the families had to deal with.  It is easy to not care about everything else that is going on in the world and just care about your life.  People tend to not think about those who are serving overseas for our country trying to keep us safe from terrorists.  Those who are dying for our country for the betterment of other generation is a really high honor.  Even though it is a high honor, it seems like it would be hard for the families of the soldiers to have to deal with all of pain and suffering that comes with a military soldier.  Like Beck said, it is not up to him, but it is up to the families and the loved ones to decide.

The True Meaning of Beauty in This World

This article is about an awesome violinist named Joshua Bell. Even though i am not into violin music, I looked him up on youtube and found out that his is both a big influence in the world of music as well as the world in general. It surprised me a lot to hear that for few people stopped to listen to him play during the Washington Post experiment describe in the article "Pearls Before Breakfast."  The article talks about how Bell was standing on a busy metro platform, in front of thousands of people during the morning rush hour.  He ended up only getting a couple people to look at him and not even enough change to buy a small coffee.

Gene Wiengarten did a pretty legitimate job at showing me everything that was going on at the metro scene. He went into detail about what Bell was wearing along with some other details for the experiment.  The descriptions throughout the article were broken up by conversations, but it was done very well.  Then Wiengarten goes into detail about Bell's background and why he chose music and whatnot.  

When I started to read the part about L’Enfant Plaza it showed me that it was a performance that didn't live up to anything like Bell's normal ones.  Wiengarten talks about the satire of the lottery ticket patrons.  The ones who were getting the show of their lives and didn't seem to care.  Even though no one gave him the time of day Bell still played beautiful music.  He was taken out of the music world and put into the general world and it seems like no one cared what he had to share with them.  


I really enjoyed reading this article, I didn't know what to think about it because of the title.  The next time I see someone playing on a busy street corner I think I might stop and listen for awhile before I assume that they are either not good at what they are doing or just another homeless person looking for some change.

'Cause the plane's already paid for.

The weasel, twelve monkeys and the shrub.  I honestly did not think that this was going to be politics especially with the title of the article.  And John McCain of all people? Really? In my opinion that guy isn't all that great.  I do understand why not many people voted for him though, it is because he is older looking.  Even though he may have more knowledge and experience, that didn't matter.  But back to the article about McCain.  I don't really enjoy reading about politics because I don't really enjoy politics in general.  The author David Foster Wallace or DFW wrote this article for Rolling Stones Magazine.  Rolling Stones sent out DFW to cover the John McCain against George W. Bush not because he is an awesome journalist or anything but because he wasn't a great journalist.  By "twelve monkeys" DFW means the humorless, immaculately dressed, no talent ass clowns (sorry for the language it seemed to fit), who represent what has become known as the top dogs of media.

I think that DFW did a great job and getting underneath the skin in this article.  He captures what it was like for McCain during the Vietnam War, what happened to him and how he became a prisoner.  DFW talks about McCain's unbelievable honor and balls that he showed with a prisoner in North Vietnam.  McCain was imprisoned in a box by himself while getting tortured and not receiving any food.  That is a pretty intense thing for someone to have to go through.  The pictures that are shown in this article are gruesome: "got bayoneted in the groin; a soldier broke his shoulder apart with a rifle butt.  Plus by this time his right knew was bent 90 degrees to the side with the bone sticking out." Things like that are not something that i want to picture, and I don't think anyone would want to. 

Wallace makes it a good story because he seems to know how to use his words in order to make people think.  The article showed me that there is more the some of the people in politics than you could ever imagine, it shows you that you should look underneath something to fully understand it.  I really liked the glossary that was included especially how the shrub is George W. Bush and how the twelve monkeys McCain's press corps, and the weasel is the gray fuzzy thing sound techs put over their boom mikes at scrums to keep annoying wind-noise off the audio.  I didn't know all of those before I read this article.  I think one of my favorite parts in this article is when one of the monkeys is talking to Mike Murphy.  I like when the monkey asks Murphy to talk about why he is going to fly to Michigan if he wins or loses in South Carolina, the Murphy answers: " 'Cause the plane's already paid for.  It makes me think that he doesn't really care what the result is, all he knows is that there is a set schedule to follow.  I just think it is funny.

DWF came about writing this article by using an anecdotal type article.   He is telling a story of how the life of McCain was like and the conversations with the people that were close to him during the campaign.  I think that it was a good way to start the article because it gives you the background information about McCain and also tells you about what happened to him and with his followers and whoever during the campian against George W. Bush and what he had to go through.  I came into this article not wanting to read it, but after reading it in full I really like it.  It is just a must read.

Media in My World

Throughout my life media has always been a big part, but I think that Internet media has become a big part of the media world.  It started off with Myspace, connecting people from all around the world together to be "friends" so you can talk, look at pictures and make new friends.  There were millions of people all around the world that were and still are on Myspace, people were following the social norm for that time period.
Then, YouTube came about, it skyrocketed video sharing throughout the world.  It is free to sign up and you can put up any video you want as long as it does not show too much skin.  There are probably over a billion videos on YouTube right now, think about it, there are probably more videos online than there are people in the world.  That is kind of crazy.
As Myspace seemed to fall from the top spot in the United States Facebook popped up to be the new Internet media sensation and take the spotlight from Myspace.  Facebook is the sensation that does what Myspace did but goes above and beyond what Myspace couldn't do.  Facebook allows people to keep in touch on a more personal level, and pretty much "creep" on what their friends are doing throughout the day and in their lives.  It is pretty much like talking to someone who is a friend or an acquaintance and figure out pretty much anything you every wanted to know about them.  It is also a good way to meet and connect with people in the real world and the job world.  Another thing that popped up and made talking with friedns so much easier is Texting.  It has made it easier to get ahold of someone if you don't have enough time to call them.  It is quick and a lot easier than calling someone and everything else.  Texting has made a huge impact on people in the world especially on those who are in junior high, high school and college.  Kids these days find it a better way to get a hold of their friends especially when they are in class and supposed to be doing homework haha.  But seriously, texting is another thing that has changed the media world.     
At the same time Flickr, Twitter and Blogs started showing up.  Flickr is photo sharing, hundreds of thousands of people put up their pictures that can be accessed by anyone online.  I don't use Flickr, so I don't really understand it all that much but I hear it is a good thing to be a part of if you want to get travel photos out on the internet.  I think that blogs are a pretty legitimate, they let people speak their mind on pretty much any issue that is at hand or really anything that you can think of (like what I am doing right now).  Twitter is something that allows people to "follow" their friends, family members, celebrities, even local newspapers and news stations.  You get to put up a "status" of how you are feeling or what you are doing, you can also add links to websites and also pictures.  I just recently joined Twitter and I like it so far, I like to see all the stuff that people have to say and what pictures they put up.  It's a lot of fun.
The best thing about all of these programs are that you can sign up for FREE.  Making all of these free was a really good idea, it gives people the opportunity to do what that want to, not having to pay anything for it.  As of right now there are a lot of things that have to do with media but I think that as the media world evolves there will be more and more things that come up and make the media better than it is right now.

Mrs. Kelly's Monster

Mrs. Kelly’s Monster by Jon Franklin is detailed, heart wrenching, suspenseful and inspiring.  The story is about a woman name Mrs. Kelly who is suffering from a tangled knot of abnormal blood vessels in the back of her brain.  Over time the knot has caused her to lose part of her eyesight, hemorrhages, lost her sense of smell, taste, she had seizures, and she smelled a strange odor then started strangling.  It started affecting her legs, and she was partially paralyzed.  She was constantly in pain and didn’t want to deal with it anymore.  The story gives me the feeling that I am in the room while they are doing this operation.  It shows that it is a deadly operation and that anything could go wrong at any moment.

I think that the author does a wonderful job at describing what is going on during the operation.  He seems to know how to catch the reader’s attention and pull them in so that the reader wants to continue with the story until it is done.  The conversation between the doctor and the nurse helped to make the story into a dialogue as well, which I think also contributed to it.     

The thing that makes this a good story is how the story gives the reader the blow-by-blow scene of what is going on during the operation.  I also like how the author uses certain times in every couple paragraphs.  I think the “pop, pop, pop” added a lot of action to the story, it let the reader know the pace of the heart beat while the story went on.  There were great details to describe to the reader that certain things are as well as what is happening with “the monster.”

Franklin approached the story in the right way, he told the story of Mrs. Kelly from how she got “the monster” all the way through her life with it, what it did to her and then to her operation.  I think that this type was perfect for this story because in give the information in such a way that it seems to flow the best when read aloud.  This was a wonderful story, it was very dynamic and it made me want to turn the page and continue but at the same time I didn’t want to find out if something bad was going to happen to Mrs. Kelly.