Christmas

I've always loved Christmas and the holiday season. I love everything about the holiday. Drinking hot chocolate, cutting down the christmas tree, pulling all the lights out and testing them, getting together with all of my family, and so much more. It's the christmas songs in the stores and on the radios. It's going to Wal-Mart at 3 am for Black Friday. It's sitting in front of the fireplace Christmas morning, wishing it wasn't over. It's being at a party with all your friends New Year's night, watching the MTV hosts countdown the New Year. The only thing I don't like about Christmas is the disgusting weather. If it could turn summer again the day after New Year's, it would be even better!

Something I love to do every year: http://www.elfyourself.com/

You can upload your picture and make yourself into a dancing elf! Merry Christmas!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Thank You For Smoking

I thought Thank You For Smoking was a good movie. Nick Naylor was very good at arguing, but what I didn't like is that they portrayed Nick Naylor as being good at arguing over night, when really arguing like that would take years and years of practice. They should make a sequel with the new 3 people of the M.O.D. squad: oil, fast food, and hazardous waste. I thought the part where Nick was teaching Joey to write a paper was really funny, because we really do learn to BS a lot of papers at a young age. Write 5 pages in religion class meant say the same thing over and over again in a different way.

My Trip to Boarders

So, I was in Boarders today for my normal weekly trip to Boarders. I usually go to Boarders every Monday after class because I work at 4:45 and get out of class at 3:15, which gives me time, but not enough time to go home. There's nothing like drinking coffee and scimming through books. Anyway, I was sitting in my normal section (which is the art/music seciton because there's a big comfy chair and tons of books to scim through) when this guy comes down my aisle to look at books. I wish I could've taken a picture of this guy, but I'm pretty sure he would've noticed, lol. He was wearing this big black overcoat, but he also had a white armband over this coat. It said, "fascist" in what looked like sharpie. And I gotta say I don't walk around with an armband that says "Democracy" all over it, why would you walk around with that? I mean, I don't know enough about fascism to critize it, but I don't think it calls for a giant black overcoat and an armband written in sharpie.

P.S. I was also looking at the Sony Readers to get my grandmother for Christmas. Does anyone have one or know anything about them?

The $39 Experiment

For those of you who haven't heard of the The $39 Experiment, I thought I'd share this pretty cool story. Some guy decided one day that he was going to take a roll of stamps (worth $39) and mail 100 letter to 100 different companies. The results? He ended up getting $272.93 worth of coupons and free stuff. His blog ended up being an internet craze, and he sold all of his freebies in an auction on EBay for charity. Not only were all the freebies up in the auction, but also a lifetime ad on his blog. HostSite won the auction, and their banner is still up on the site. The auction went for $81 and he matched the price to give to the American Heart Association, raising a total $162. The experiment was started in February 2006 and ended around November 2006 when the author said he might start a new experiment titled "Another $39 Experiment", which he linked to. This site has nothing on it to this day.

The 39 Dollar Experiment
Another 39 Dollar Experiment

Karl Paulnack, pianist and director of the music division at Boston Conservatory

 I've seen this article many times before, but I came across it again today and thought I would share:


Welcome address to parents of the freshman class at Boston Conservatory given by Karl Paulnack, pianist and director of the music division at Boston Conservatory.

"One of my parents' deepest fears, I suspect, is that society would not properly value me as a musician, that I wouldn't be appreciated. I had very good grades in high school, I was good in science and math, and they imagined that as a doctor or a research chemist or an engineer, I might be more appreciated than I would be as a musician. I still remember my mother's remark when I announced my decision to apply to music school-she said, "You're WASTING your SAT scores." On some level, I think, my parents were not sure themselves what the value of music was, what its purpose was. And they LOVED music, they listened to classical music all the time. They just weren't really clear about its function.

So let me talk about that a little bit, because we live in a society that puts music in the "arts and entertainment" section of the newspaper, and serious music, the kind your kids are about to engage in, has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with entertainment, in fact it's the opposite of entertainment. Let me talk a little bit about music, and how it works.

The first people to understand how music really works were the ancient Greeks. And this is going to fascinate you; the Greeks said that music and astronomy were two sides of the same coin. Astronomy was seen as the study of relationships between observable, permanent, external objects, and music was seen as the study of relationships between invisible, internal, hidden objects. Music has a way of finding the big, invisible moving pieces inside our hearts and souls and helping us figure out the position of things inside us. Let me give you some examples of how this works.

One of the most profound musical compositions of all time is the "Quartet for the End of Time" written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in 1940.

Messiaen was 31 years old when France entered the war against Nazi Germany. He was captured by the Germans in June of 1940, sent across Germany in a cattle car and imprisoned in a concentration camp.

He was fortunate to find a sympathetic prison guard who gave him paper and a place to compose. There were three other musicians in the camp, a cellist, a violinist, and a clarinetist, and Messiaen wrote his quartet with these specific players in mind. It was performed in January 1941 for four thousand prisoners and guards in the prison camp. Today it is one of the most famous masterworks in the repertoire.

Given what we have since learned about life in the concentration camps, why would anyone in his right mind waste time and energy writing or playing music? There was barely enough energy on a good day to find food and water, to avoid a beating, to stay warm, to escape torture-why would anyone bother with music? And yet-from the camps, we have poetry, we have music, we have visual art; it wasn't just this one fanatic Messiaen; many, many people created art. Why? Well, in a place where people are only focused on survival, on the bare necessities, the obvious conclusion is that art must be, somehow, essential for life. The camps were without money, without hope, without commerce, without recreation, without basic respect, but they were not without art. Art is part of survival; art is part of the human spirit, an unquenchable expression of who we are. Art is one of the ways in which we say, "I am alive, and my life has meaning."

On September 12, 2001 I was a resident of Manhattan . That morning I reached a new understanding of my art and its relationship to the world. I sat down at the piano that morning at 10 AM to practice as was my daily routine; I did it by force of habit, without thinking about it. I lifted the cover on the keyboard, and opened my music, and put my hands on the keys and took my hands off the keys. And I sat there and thought, does this even matter? Isn't this completely irrelevant? Playing the piano right now, given what happened in this city yesterday, seems silly, absurd, irreverent, pointless. Why am I here? What place has a musician in this moment in time? Who needs a piano player right now? I was completely lost.

And then I, along with the rest of New York , went through the journey of getting through that week. I did not play the piano that day, and in fact I contemplated briefly whether I would ever want to play the piano again. And then I observed how we got through the day. At least in my neighborhood, we didn't shoot hoops or play Scrabble. We didn't play cards to pass the time, we didn't watch TV, we didn't shop, we most certainly did not go to the mall. The first organized activity that I saw in New York , that same day, was singing. People sang. People sang around fire houses, people sang "We Shall Overcome". Lots of people sang "America the Beautiful." The first organized public event that I remember was the Brahms Requiem, later that week, at Lincoln Center, with the New York Philharmonic. The first organized public expression of grief, our first communal response to that historic event, was a concert. That was the beginning of a sense that life might go on. The US Military
secured the airspace, but recovery was led by the arts, and by music in particular, that very night.

From these two experiences, I have come to understand that music is not part of "arts and entertainment" as the newspaper section would have us believe. It's not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can't with our minds.

Some of you may know Samuel Barber's heartwrenchingly beautiful piece "Adagio for Strings." If you don't know it by that name, then s ome of you may know it as the background music which accompanied the Oliver Stone movie PLATOON, a film about the Vietnam War. If you know that piece of music either way, you know it has the ability to crack your heart open like a walnut; it can make you cry over sadness you didn't know you had. Music can slip beneath our conscious reality to get at what's really going on inside us the way a good therapist does.

I bet that you have never been to a wedding where there was absolutely no music. There might have been only a little music, there might have been some really bad music, but I bet you there was some music. And something very predictable happens at weddings-people get all pent up with all kinds of emotions, and then there's some musical moment where the action of the wedding stops and someone sings or plays the flute or something. And even if the music is lame, even if the quality isn't good, predictably 30 or 40 percent of the people who are going to cry at a wedding cry a couple of moments after the music starts. Why? The Greeks. Music allows us to move around those big invisible pieces of ourselves and rearrange our insides so that we can express what we feel even when we can't talk about it.

Can you imagine watching INDIANA JONES or SUPERMAN or STAR WARS with the dialogue but no music? What is it about the music swelling up at just the right moment in ET so that all the softies in the audience start crying at exactly the same moment? I guarantee you if you showed the movie with the music stripped out, it wouldn't happen that way. The Greeks: Music is the understanding of the relationship between invisible internal objects.

I'll give you one more example, the story of the most important concert of my life. I must tell you I have played a little less than a thousand concerts in my life so far. I have played in places that I thought were important. I like playing in Carnegie Hall; I enjoyed playing in Paris ; it made me very happy to please the critics in St. Petersburg . I have played for people I thought were important; music critics of major newspapers, foreign heads of state. The most important concert of my entire life took place in a nursing home in Fargo , ND, about 4 years ago.

I was playing with a very dear friend of mine who is a violinist. We began, as we often do, with Aaron Copland's Sonata, which was written during World War II and dedicated to a young friend of Copland's, a young pilot who was shot down during the war. Now we often talk to our audiences about the pieces we are going to play rather than providing them with written program notes. But in this case, because we began the concert with this piece, we decided to talk about the piece later in the program and to just come out and play the music without explanation.

Midway through the piece, an elderly man seated in a wheelchair near the front of the concert hall began to weep. This man, whom I later met, was clearly a soldier-even in his 70's, it was clear from his buzz-cut hair, square jaw and general demeanor that he had spent a good deal of his life in the military. I thought it a little bit odd that someone would be moved to tears by that particular movement of that particular piece, but it wasn't the first time I've heard crying in a concert and we went on with the concert and finished the piece.

When we came out to play the next piece on the program, we decided to talk about both the first and second pieces, and we described the circumstances in which the Copland was written and mentioned its dedication to a downed pilot. The man in the front of the audience became so disturbed that he had to leave the auditorium. I honestly figured that we would not see him again, but he did come backstage afterwards, tears and all, to explain himself.

What he told us was this: "During World War II, I was a pilot, and I was in an aerial combat situation where one of my team's planes was hit. I watched my friend bail out, and watched his parachute open, but the Japanese planes which had engaged us returned and machine gunned across the parachute chords so as to separate the parachute from the pilot, and I watched my friend drop away into the ocean, realizing that he was lost. I have not thought about this for many years, but during that first piece of music you played, this memory returned to me so vividly that it was as though I was reliving it. I didn't understand why this was happening, why now, but then when you came out to explain that this piece of music was written to commemorate a lost pilot, it was a little more than I could handle. How does the music do that? How did it find those feelings and those memories in me?

Remember the Greeks: music is the study of invisible relationships between internal objects. This concert in Fargo was the most important work I have ever done. For me to play for this old soldier and help him connect, somehow, with Aaron Copland, and to connect their memories of their lost friends, to help him remember and mourn his friend, this is my work. This is why music matters.

What follows is part of the talk I will give to this year's freshman class when I welcome them a few days from now. The responsibility I will charge your sons and daughters with is this:

"If we were a medical school, and you were here as a med student practicing appendectomies, you'd take your work very seriously because you would imagine that some night at two AM someone is going to waltz into your emergency room and you're going to have to save their life. Well, my friends, someday at 8 PM someone is going to walk into your concert hall and bring you a mind that is confused, a heart that is overwhelmed, a soul that is weary. Whether they go out whole again will depend partly on how well you do your craft.

You're not here to become an entertainer, and you don't have to sell yourself. The truth is you don't have anything to sell; being a musician isn't about dispensing a product, like selling used Chevies. I'm not an entertainer; I'm a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You're here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.

Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I expect you not only to master music; I expect you to save the planet. If there is a future wave of wellness on this planet, of harmony, of peace, of an end to war, of mutual understanding, of equality, of fairness, I don't expect it will come from a government, a military force or a corporation. I no longer even expect it to come from the religions of the world, which together seem to have brought us as much war as they have peace. If there is a future of peace for humankind, if there is to be an understanding of how these invisible, internal things should fit together, I expect it will come from the artists, because that's what we do.

As in the concentration camp and the evening of 9/11, the artists are the ones who might be able to help us with our internal, invisible lives.

Correctional Facility

 My thoughts shown with **

     So, I was busy working on my rough draft today, and I get a phone call from a 213 number. At first I thought it was a little weird that an out-of-state number was calling, but I picked it up.
"Hello, this is a recording from, "Ty" (Ty was said in an older males voice), at the Eastside (or something like Eastside) Correctional Facility, press 1 to accept this call or press 2 to reject this call."
My first thoughts start rushing through my head *Who's Ty and why would he call me from a correctional facility? What if he knows someone I know? What if he needs help? What if he's a pedophile?* Meanwhile, the recording goes, "Goodbye"....Apparently I took to long to respond. *Oh well, I guess I'll get back to my rough draft.*

5 minutes later -
Another incoming call
"Hello, this is a recording from, "Ty" (Ty was said in an older males voice), at the Eastside (or something like Eastside) Correctional Facility, press 1 to accept this call or press 2 to reject this call."
*Umm....I guess I'll accept it...*
"Hey, is this Brenda?"
*Who the hell is Brenda?* "Umm....no"
"Oh, I guess I have the wrong number. Roland told me to call this number, said they would help. Do you know a Roland?"
"Umm.....no"
"Oh okay wrong number" (Hangs out)
*Ummm......*

Caskets

     I guess to up the amount of weird things that Wal-Mart sells, they are now selling caskets.....No, I'm not kidding. You can only purchase them online, but Wal-Mart now sells about 15 caskets. Now if you're digging the cremation thing, they also have urns. The best part about this is the category they put them under: For the Home. I don't know how I feel about this. I mean, I guess it's nice for people who wouldn't be able to afford one normally, but caskets just seem like one of those things you shouldn't buy at Wal-Mart.

Check out the entire category

Halloween

     I spent Halloween weekend at State College trying out for their indoor drumline, and Saturday night I got to see some very interesting Halloween costumes. First of all, the streets were filled with slutty fairys, slutty nurses, and slutty zombies, but this will be dedicated to all the original costumes. Some of the best costumes are the ones that make you wonder what they are. I saw a man in a wheelchair (who obviously really didn't need a wheelchair), and I thought, "What is he? A paraplegic?". Then out of no where a man in a tan suit, blue shirt, and sneakers comes running behind him. "Oh my god! He's Forrest Gump! And that must be....Lt. Dan!" Another cool costume was T.I in jail. This guy just wore jeans and an orange tee-shirt on which he wrote "Inmate" on the front and "T.I." on the back. Laziness at its finest.
     Every year collegehumor.com posts their favorite costume pictures of the year. These pictures are some of the greatest costumes I've ever seen.
Check it out!
Best costumes of 2008
Best group costumes

Desiree Jennings

     Desiree Jennings got a seasonal flu shot and ended up with a neurological disorder that causes her to not be able to walk forward. She can walk backwards and can run, but has a reaction when she tries to walk forward. She can't even talk correctly if she isn't running.

Cooking with Lily

Pumpkin Pie –
     So, about two weeks ago, I had a day off, and I decided I would carve a Jack-O-Lantern for October. I drove out to the nearest pumpkin farm. (You know you live in the middle of nowhere when the nearest pumpkin farm means driving 5 minutes.) I bought the biggest, roundest, and orangest (not a word) pumpkin I could get with my saved up change. I brought it home and started cutting away. When I got all the gross gooey guts out, I decided why not make a pumpkin pie out of the pumpkin I get off the edges. I know you’re suppose to buy a different kind of pumpkin for pie, and you’re suppose to use the actual pumpkin and not just the scrapings you get off the edge, but I was feeling daring. After sorting the extra pumpkin into a bowl, picking out extra seeds, adding some water, steaming in the microwave, and pureeing, I finally had some pumpkin puree. I took the extra seeds, covered them with butter and salt, and roasted them in the oven. I then made homemade crust, and mixed up the pumpkin pie filling using my puree. I then realized that I didn’t own a pie pan. After a trip to Wal-Mart, my pie went into the oven. After about 50 minutes of baking, I had a pumpkin pie. Even though it wasn’t the most conventional directions, it ended up tasting good.
     I also ended up finishing carving my pumpkin. I made an “Imagine” design based off the Bluecoat’s 2009 DCI show because each year DCI has a pumpkin carving contest. Here’s the video from their show:

2009 - Bluecoats - IMAGINE

John Dunnam | MySpace Videos

Bertolli –
     This is going to sound like a commercial, but I just love Bertolli skillet meals! My favorite part about them is it makes me feel like a gourmet chef (I have no cooking skill whatsoever). What other time can I say I made “Chicken Florentine and Farfalle”? All you do is put the meal in a pan on medium on your stove for 10 minutes, and stir occasionally. The sauce is in frozen chunks in the mix, so it melts as the meal cooks. It’s pretty cool. In case you’re not hungry enough already, here’s their real commercial:

Apple Pie –
     After my pumpkin pie accomplishments, I decided to make an apple pie last week. First I went to the local orchard, Blevins, and picked my own apples. After bringing the apples home and washing them, I realized that peeling, coring, and slicing these apples was going to be a pain in the butt. I decided to purchase an apple peeler. Good decision! This is the coolest old machine I have ever seen. You just stab your apple onto this fork thing, and turn the knob. It slices, cores, and peels an apple in less than 10 seconds. (Picture included) After making pie crust, mixing the spices with the apples, and filling the pie pan I bought for the pumpkin pie, it made its way into the oven. My apple pie turned out better then my pumpkin pie. My favorite thing to do is to top a slice of apple pie with two scoops of ice cream, whipped cream, and caramel sauce. I’m probably going to die young of overly clogged arteries, but it’s totally worth it.

Time for Lily’s TOP 3 IPHONE APPLICATIONS!

1. ITick
ITick is a free application that is a metronome. It is very handy if you need a quick reference for tempo, although my cheap KORG metronome is more accurate. The nice thing about ITick is that it also serves as a reference for the common tempo points of moderato, allegro, andante, etc, which comes in handy when playing more classical pieces that don’t have the BPMs (beats per minute) written at the top. For free, I haven’t found a metronome that will beat this, but you can’t forget that if you have an IPhone you’re still paying the $20 a month service charge!

2. Offender Locator Lite
Don’t let the name full you, the reason it’s called “Lite” is not because the criminals it lists are any safer. The "Lite" version is just the free version. Offender Locator Lite is an application that lets you look up any registered sex offenders in your area, the location of your phone, or any address. Not only does it show you where they live, it also shows you a picture if it’s available. It’s pretty creepy, but it’s definitely an interesting IPhone app. It almost makes me feel bad for the people listed, but then I remember they had to commit a pretty serious crime to get onto the list in the first place.



3. Mach Dice
So, this may be the most pointless application ever… I love it! It basically lets you shake your IPhone in order to roll plastic dice on the screen. I can play with it for hours. When I was in high school, sometimes a couple people would bet some lunch money on a game of dice if we were really bored in some class. Now, I love playing with dice when I’m bored. It’s hard to describe how intense a game of dice can get when you’re bored.



*Bonus App!*
Phase
The reason Phase is a bonus app is because it’s really not an application at all. Phase is an IPod game that can be downloaded to any IPod. It allows you to turn any song in your ITunes library into an interactive Guitar Hero like experience. Unfortunately, since I have 8 gigabytes of music, and I only have an 8 gigabyte IPod, I can no longer fit Phase onto my IPod. It was very fun while it lasted, but I warn you it’s not exactly like Guitar Hero.



*Please note, I do not own an IPhone myself, just an IPod nano. I know these applications because I play them on my friends’ IPhones.

Ecclesiastes

     I decided to look up the book of Ecclesiastes, because I don't know it very well, and I wanted to see why Bradbury picked that book for Montag to be. I thought it was very interesting that Bradbury decided to choose a book of the Bible that is not very popular or talked about. The book of Ecclesiastes was written around the third or fourth century B.C. by a man who is called Qoheleth in the book.
     Qoheleth was disturbed by many things he viewed in life; that sometimes bad people lived longer than good people, that those who were most deserving did not always get what they earned, and that those who worked hard for a living had to leave their possessions on earth when they died. Qoheleth really asked the question, "Why should we work so hard to be wise and good?". Ecclesiastes really does not answer this question, but it is one of the earliest books of the Bible that really ponders about the afterlife and what lies after death, which makes it very similar to Revelations.
     One of the major points of Ecclesiastes is that Qoheleth was calling the Israelites to try and understand God and life in a new way. He was trying to get the Israelites to really ponder the meaning of their religion, instead of blindly following it. The point of Ecclesiastes wasn't to answer questions, but the get people to ask them in the first place. I think this is why Bradbury chose this book. Like Granger and the wanderers in Fahrenheit 451, Qoheleth was just trying to get people to think about their lives.

Brooke Greenberg

I was watching TLC tonight, and there was a special on Brooke Greenberg. Brooke is 16 years old, but she hasn't aged since she was around 2 years old. She is the size of the average 1 year old, around 20 lbs. It was very interesting to me because Brooke is less than 2 years younger then me. Some scientists believe she may hold the secrets to the fountain of youth because she never ages.

This is a picture of Brooke and her sister. Her sister is Carly is 13 years old. Brooke is 16.

See the full video

Burning Bright

     Burning Bright is the climax and action of this novel. One of my favorite action scenes of this novel is Montag’s fight with the Mechanical Hound. “It was half across the lawn, coming from the shadows, moving with such drifting ease that it was like a single solid cloud of black-gray smoke blown at him in silence.” I like this last chapter a lot because it contains much more visual imagery, as opposed to conversation and dialogue.
     Also in this chapter, the reader gets to meet Granger. He shows Montag the fake chase scene that is happening on the television, in which they capture a fake Montag in order to trick the audience into believing that they caught him. It shows that the government is willing to sacrifice innocent people in order to maintain peace and control. The reader also learns that Montag becomes the book of Ecclesiastes from the Bible.

Picture yourself in a boat on a river, With tangerine trees and marmalade skies.

     I just found out that Lucy that inspired the Beatles song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds died Monday of lupus. Lucy Vodden was classmates with John Lennon's son, Julian. Julian brought home a picture he made in class and said it was, "Lucy in the sky with diamonds." John Lennon ended up making a song out of it. Many people think that the song was actually named after LSD (Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds), but that is not the case. I think it's an interesting coincidence though. For any of you that have seen the movie Yellow Submarine, it's easy to see why people thought it was LSD. I saw Yellow Submarine for the first time when I was about 8 years old, and it probably made more sense then than it does now.
     Lucy died at age 46 of lupus. Lupus is a chronic illness during which the immune system attacks the body's own tissue. She battled this disease for more than five years.
Original news article

Here's the Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds clip from the movie Yellow Submarine

Also, you can listen the Across the Universe verison for those people that want to listen to a more modern version.

Glee

     So, a new TV show has made FOX Wednesday my favorite night of the week. GLEE! Glee is a show about a high school's show tune club. The program was dying until a new teacher takes charge. It's filled with tons of high school stereotypes, like the pregnant cheerleader dating a football player. It's also been filled with tons of surprises. It's like your typical high school drama show on musical steroids. Watch for yourself!

The Sieve and the Sand

     My favorite scene in The Sieve and the Sand is the scene where Mildred's friends come over to gossip. Mrs. Phelps and Mrs. Bowles both bring up important issues for this book.
     Mrs. Phelps says, "The Army called Pete yesterday. He'll be back next week. The Army said so. Quick war. Forty-eight hours, they said, and everyone home. That's what the Army said. Quick war. Pete was called yesterday and they said he'd be back next week. Quick..." This quote shows that in this society, war has become nothing important. It is quick and easy. No one worries about it.
     Mrs. Bowles says, "I've had two children by Caesarian section. No use going through all that agony for a baby. The world must reproduce, you know, the race must go on. Besides, they sometimes look just like you, and that's nice. Two Caesarians turned the trick, yes, sir. Oh, my doctor said, Caesarians aren't necessary; you've got the hips for it, everything's normal, but I insisted." "I plunk the children in school nine days out of ten. I put up with them when they come home three days a month; it's not bad at all. You heave them into the 'parlor' and turn the switch. It's like washing clothes: stuff laundry in and slam the lid. They'd just as soon kick as kiss me. Thank God, I can kick back!" The first thing this shows is that society had stopped caring about children. This also shows how everyone lives "comfortably". Mrs. Bowles doesn't want to go through pain so much that she has Caesarians. She also shows how vain she is because she wants her children to look like her so much.

Harry Potter Theme Park

     For those of you who haven't heard yet, they're opening a Harry Potter theme park! It is opening spring 2010 in Universal Orlando. They are creating a life sized Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, and Hogwarts Express. The park will be complete with racing dragon roller coasters and the Three Broom Sticks.
     I will definitely be visiting this park hopefully in the near future. It sounds so exciting. I can see that Harry Potter posts seem to be a trend for me.

Link to full article

The Hearth and the Salamander

     Reading Fahrenheit 451 for the second time has given me a chance to relook at some aspects of the books I didn't notice before. When I read the book for the first time in 11th grade, I didn't pay as much attention to the little details because I was trying to understand what was happening in the book. In 11th grade my teacher pointed out a lot of the inventions Ray Bradbury predicted. If you look at many of the things in this book, they didn't exist in 1953 (The year the book was first published). Reading the book for the second time gave me a chance to realize all the predictions of future technology.

1. First are the earbuds, called "seashells" in the book. In 1953 they had radio, but headphones definitely were not earbuds like they are today and in the book.  Bradbury almost predicted little ear phones that would fit into your ear. 
2. Moving sidewalks and escalators are also mentioned in the book. I had to look up if escalators existed in 1953, and I found this, "The first patent relating to an escalator-like machine was granted in 1859 to a Massachusetts man for a steam driven unit." (Link to source) So, escalators did exist in 1953, but not the kind of moving sidewalks that Bradbury talks about in 451. They almost remind me of the moving sidewalks you find in airports or at Universal Studios, FL. 
3. Subways also existed in 1953, but in the book Bradbury talks about air-propelled subways. Aeromovel is the only air-propelled train I could find that exists today. Aeromovel has actually built two air-propelled trains, one in Brazil and one in Indonesia. Aeromovel was created in 1994.
4. Bradbury also mentions sleeping pills in his book. Sleeping medicine is a very modern concept, and was just beginning to develop in 1953. 
5. Bradbury also described a machine that "slid down into your stomach like a black cobra an echoing well looking for all the old water and old time gathered there." This is a decent description of "stomach pumps", also known as gastric lavage. The dictionary defines this device as "a suction pump with a flexible tube inserted into the stomach through the mouth and esophagus to empty the stomach in an emergency, as in a case of poisoning." Although stomach pumps have been around for many years, including in 1953, the concept of using it after a suicide attempt was very rare.
   

World of Warcraft

     I'm completely admitting my dorkdom for this post. I'd like to tell the story of Ezra Chatterton, known as ePhoenix in the World of Warcraft. Ezra was only 10 years old when he discovered he had a brain tumor and was diagnosed with metastatic cancer. Since Ezra was contained to a hospital bed for treatment, he started to really enjoy the massive multiplayer online roleplaying game, World of Warcraft. Ezra was granted a wish from Make-A-Wish Foundation of America. "I wished for a trip to Blizzard because I'd like to see if they could make a character and do some things for us." (Blizzard is the company that makes WoW) Not only did Blizzard meet this wish, they completely outdid themselves. Ezra went to Blizzard for a day where they designed a whole new weapon, a mount, and a quest. The quest involved Ezra doing a sound recording for the quest characters voice, and they even made his dog in the game. They also completely outfitted his character in the best armor and weapons. Now this doesn't sound like much if you don't play WoW, but the weapon they created for him is an extremely rare item. He was the only one with his mount in the entire game (of 8.5 million people). It was the best mount of its time.
     Unfortunately about a year later, Ezra ended up dying from his brain tumor. They ended up making Ezra's character a Elder during the game's Lunar Festival. His weapon, quest, and mount still exist in Azeroth.

http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/business/article_1702706.php

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

     When I was searching for information on The Perks of Being a Wallflower, I found this video: http://blip.tv/file/1315315/ . It is a video of a speech that Steven Chbosky, author of The Perks of Being a Wallflower, gave at ALA's Banned Books Read-Out. In the video Steven reads a letter from one of his fans, and urges libraries and schools not to ban books.

Kanye West at the VMAs

     I would just like to say I'm kind of shocked by Kanye West's actions at the VMAs. Even if you didn't agree with Taylor Swift getting the award (I'm not a Taylor Swift fan at all), she still worked extremely hard to get where she did. I also thought it was very awesome of Beyonce to give up most of her acceptance speech so that Taylor Swift could actually finish hers.
     The next day, Kanye West went on Jay Leno to apologize. He almost started crying when Jay Leno asked him what his mom would say about the situation (Kanye West's mother died in 2009).

Here's the video of Kanye at the VMAs

MTV Shows

Here's the video of Kanye on Jay Leno

Moving On

     Today, I was think about my debate team in high school. Right about now, they're probably preparing for the upcoming season. This is the first time in three years I won't be joining them. It's weird to be done with debate.
     In high school I was very successful with policy debate. In 9th grade my partner and I placed 2nd in the district. In 10th grade we won the Monsignor Lyons debate tournament at Delone Catholic. In 11th grade my school swept districts. This means that we our two teams took both places that qualify you for the state tournament. The day of the state tournament, I ended up getting a 101 degree fever. It was probably the worst I've ever debated, but I still placed 14th speaker in the state. I'm definitely missing another chance to do well at states.

Writing from the Darkness

     The first thing that called out to me in "Writing from the Darkness" is her account of going to the outhouse at night. Her granddad would say "No light necessary. There is light in darkness, you just have to find it." It reminded me of how little children believe almost anything you tell them.
     It's more then just believing in Santa, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and so on. Children are so easily manipulated at that age. I'd say most parents get their children to believe in their religion or their political party. It's not like a 5 year old kid is going to question their faith. It reminded me of one time when I was baby sitting. This little boy asked me, "Where did all the corn go?" Last time he was there, the corn field hadn't been plowed yet. My sister told him the deer ate all the corn. I wonder how many years it will take him to realize that corn fields get plowed...

DCA Finals in Rochester, NY

     I just got back from the Drum Corps Associates finals in Rochester, NY! Drum Corps Associates is the national all-age drum corps circuit. DCA hosts over 25 competitions annually and has 27 competing corps. I compete with the Hawthorne Caballeros from Hawthorne, NJ
The Hawthorne Caballeros were founded in 1946 by James J. Costello, Jr. Since 1946 The Caballeros "have won the DCA World Championship 9 times, the American Legion National Title 16 times, the National Dream Contest 17 times, and the New Jersey State American Legion Title 43 times. They have completed 5 undefeated seasons, consecutively in 1984 and 1985. They have placed in the top 3 placements at the DCA World Championship 31 times in 43 appearances, a clear indicator of the Caballeros consistency for excellence on the drum corps field."
     The Caballeros perform in around 10 competitions in a season. These competitions are all over the northeast in New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The competitive season starts Thanksgiving weekend, after which we practice every 3 weekends. In March we start to practice every weekend until finals on Labor Day weekend. We practice Saturday and Sunday, usually for more then 8 hours a day, and we perform a show almost every weekend in the summer.
     The Caballeros have around 120 marching members from over 7 states and Canada. These include New York, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Virginia, New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Maryland. I personally drive over 4 hours every weekend to compete with the Caballeros. Sometimes when a show was farther away, I would drive over 7 or 8 hours.
     This weekend was the last weekend of the season. It was DCA finals hosted in Rochester, NY. It all started Thursday with a 7 hour drive to Rochester to my hotel room. Friday we had a 6 hour rehearsal followed by a 2 hour exhibition rehearsal in the city. Saturday we practiced 7 hours and then competed in the preliminary competition. Sunday we had the last practice of the entire season, which was only 3 hours, and then competed at finals. Thousands of fans come from all over the world to see the DCA finals. Finals was followed by an encore in the parking lot. We placed 5th in the country.
     Coming back home is so weird after such a long season. It's crazy to think I won't see my fellow members this weekend...

Here's a video of the cymbal line's (which I am a part of) finals performance:

A Very Potter Musical

    So, I was sitting at my computer trying to get rid of my insomnia, and I decided to be productive with my time and post on my blog. Without further ado I would like to introduce to you A Very Potter Musical! Written by college students, A Very Potter Musical is a parody musical about Harry Potter. They took some of the events from each book and made it into 1 musical. It is a full length musical and contains many very good songs, which is surprising.
    I think the potential to make money off this musical is very high. They are planning to make a website and sell the soundtrack, but I think they should sell the rights to perform it. It is kind of cool how a college made musical can be broadcast to hundreds of thousands of people through YouTube and become a hit. 
http://www.youtube.com/user/StarKidPotter

What Should Colleges Teach?

     I find myself torn between two view points after reading Stanley Fish's "What Should Colleges Teach?" My first thought is that learning composition is very important in order to succeed in today's society which heavily stresses communication. Being able to express yourself clearly on paper is a necessary skill, and it should be important on a collegiate level. Therefore, it seems like a good idea to have outside source monitoring curriculum in the classroom.
     However, my second thought is this: Is the American Council of Trustees and Alumni really the right way to monitor curriculum? In "What Will They Learn? A Report on General Education Requirements at 100 of the Nation’s Leading Colleges and Universities” the American Council of Trustees and Alumni based their scores "on whether students are required to take courses in seven key areas." These areas are composition, literature, foreign language, U.S. government or history, economics, mathematics and natural or physical science. Why do they have the right to make these seven areas the most fundamental to education? None of the arts are even included on this list, which many agree are also fundamental to a well rounded education.

What Is Good Writing?

Good writing grabs the attention of the audience while fulfilling its purpose. It uses proper grammar and punctuation to make the document easy to understand. It is focused and introduces some type of new concept or idea. It should show the author’s emotion towards a subject, or it should appeal to the reader’s emotion. Good writing should be easy and fun to read.


Good writing is not boring or confusing. Good writing does not make the reader want to stop. It does not confuse the reader to the point that they lose the purpose of the paper. Good writing also does not use language that the audience will not understand.