UPDATE!

so its been a few months since my last post, and for the....6 people who have ever read this, alot has happened! i was convinced by my lying mother to come to houston "for the summer" tho "get help" and "get a temp job" until the fall when i might go back to school. well i DID GET INTO IIT!!! so i'll be doing that in the fall! but the temp job i got here is pointless/useless, so i've just been catching up on web shows and playing lego batman. (which is actually pretty cool). so i thought, hey? why not do some blogging? i'm not doing anything else, so! here we go!

The American Dream: History Lesson? or Current Reality?

You've heard the stories (and subsequently the commercials) about the American dream. People coming to the country from anywhere else in the world, to start over, to dream, and to achieve. the late 19th and early 20th century is literally littered with stories of immigrants and first generation Americans, showing up to Ellis Island with literally nothing but the clothes on their backs, and making a family, a home, and livelihood. you don't often see that around anymore.

What Happened?

Did we take in too many immigrants? as the government thought? Doubtful, seeing as there are still stretches of the west that look the same way they did when Lewis and Clark first saw them, so land isn't the issue.
Did we run out of money? True that the worst economy this country, and the world, has ever seen was in the first half of the 20th Century. But the best economy this country, and the world, has ever seen, was in the 2nd half of the 20th Century.
Did we simply stop believing? In ourselves? in each other? I think the Answer to that is yes. i think somewhere in turmoil of the 60's, somebody said, so what? this country kills its own people, doesn't respect it's ancestors, and spends money on things that don't matter. while it ignores the problems that are growing both short term and long term.

and suddenly that was that. the American dream of anybody can come here and achieve anything became useless, frivolous even. what's the point of prospering in such a toxic enviroment, to end up "the smartest man on the Heap?"

to a certain extent i think that sentiment is still prevalent in some places. but in those places, they know little about the world. what i mean is, the world pays a much larger tax percentage than we do. true, they have universal health care, but the supreme court may just rule that unconstitutional, and then what do we do? people would rather say to hell with my health, at least i'll be free. Freedom. Freedom is a word that isn't spoken in the rest of the world like it is here. we say things like "i've got the 1st amendment, i'm FREE to say whatever i want," and believe me, you are. The Westboro Baptist Church shows us how true that Amendment is. but in most parts of the world, you can't do that. they'll kill you. literally, you speak out against the government, and they'll kill you. you disappear in the middle of the night, literally out of your bed, and your wife and kids never hear from you again. Freedom is what people come to this country for. and to a certain extent, that's the American Dream. Freedom. Equal Opportunity under the Law. In most of the rest of the world, everybody gets the same outcome, no matter where you're born, how old you are, or what color you are. you all get the same outcome. but not here. Here you all get the same shot. The same three strikes at the plate, the same audition. You might fail, but you might achieve something great. you could be homeless begging for money, and then all the sudden you're the voice of the Cleveland Cavaliers. You can come from literally 12 dollars to your name, to having a movie made about your life. you can show up in times square and become a mega star. this is the country of people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps. of digging down deep within, and finding the strength to build that wall, study that book, and make that deal. that's why we celebrate sports so much. because sports are the epitome of human capabilities, and they are constantly jumping higher, running faster, and swinging for the farther fence. And going over.

So is the American Dream dead? No. But it means so much more than it used to.

God Bless the United States of America.

Everyone One Deserves a little MAYHEM!

ok, so recently, you have to have seen these commercials: A guy, dressed in a suit, claims to be something, that distracts you from driving, or causes you to file an insurance claim, and says get allstate. its an insurance commerical, fine. but they have done something that very few commercials have done lately: NOT MADE ME BORED AFTER JUST ONE VIEWING!!! these commercials are great! i think the blend of cockiness followed by simulated bodily harm, really hits a nerve in the human pleasure center. and now, they've come out with city specific radio adds (well, i don't know if it happens in your city, Allstate actually started in Chicago, so it may just be here, iono, comment and tell me!), that are also genius. so i guess i'm just saying, way 2 go allstate, you found what worked and you're sticking with it, unlike geico, who's got 3 different mascots: the gecko, the caveman, and that face vincent price, (though the vincent price about wood chucks and a few of those new gecko ones are pretty funny, but PICK ONE AND STICK WITH IT!). THAT IS, whoa sry, left caps lock on there for a second, that is all, good by for now.

try and keep up.

ok, television is getting into a very BAD habit. i dont know what to call it, so i'll just call it "Plot Line ADD". there are some shows out there, that skip from scene to scene to scene to scene, all in the span of 10 minutes, and you're expected to assimilate a large amount of information very quickly, or to understand a small amount of information, even quicker. i'll give you 2 examples:

Better with you: a sitcom about 3 couples, all in various stages of their lives/relationships, 2 parents, married for a long time, the 1st daughter and her bf, who've been 2gether for 9 years, and the 2nd daughter who is getting married and having a baby after knowing a guy for like...3 weeks or something. but the premise is irrelevant. the problem is, the scenes go back and fourth so quickly, you can hardly keep up. the scenes only last like a minute or two, before changing to the next scene. for those of us who are older than lets say.....me, who can't operate a stove or print pictures or work a tv without the help of.........a millennial baby, i can see how one could easily get left behind in the speed of the show. (dont get me wrong, the show is hilarious, and i'm really glad to see that someone other than ashton kutcher still has a career after that 70's show, Debbie-Jo Rupp!) it's just fast paced thats all.

THE EVENT: SIT UP AND PAY ATTENTION! cause if your not, you'll be more lost than lost fans after the series finale. this show switches scenes after about 45 seconds, and each new scene has a new location and/or time period, so you have to mentally catalogue things, not only in local episode storyline terms, but also in overall, over arching terms. now lost started this trend of ridiculously large casts and plot lines (with a scifi twist i guess i have 2 stipulate, b/c soaps do the same thing, though they don't shift near as fast, or as often!), but THE EVENT ups the ante, and forces your brain to work harder than that college math final where you went out clubbing the night before the test (nobody else did that?). i read a book a while back that basically stipulated that the more pop culture evolves and pushes boundaries, the smarter we get. dramas went from the single plot of drag-net, to the double plot of starsky and hutch (they were always doing something at the begining and end of every episode), to the multiplot episodes of NYPD Blue (now this book was written just before Lost came out, so, that would have been the next evolutionary step, where as the Event is simply picking up speed on the same concept).

so is tv giving us ADD? are we being forced to thing quicker and in differening directions from minute to minute b/c of what we watch on tv? who really knows, who really cares? tv is for turning on, tuning in, and droping out. thats all i know.

Katy Perry needs to be Unplugged!

ok, don't take the title the wrong way. i really enjoy Katy perry's music. i like message of "firework" and the mental imagery of "teenage dream". and how catchy/addictive was "California Gurls"? i mean really! what i mean is, katy perry needs an acoustic album. now granted i've never seen her in concert or anything, but i did watch when she was the musical guest on SNL a few weeks (maybe months, my timeline is......relative these days) ago. and while it sounded a little weird, i understood why. because the songs that she sings are all modded, or electrified, or w.e. in a studio, with backup singers and echos and all kinds of tweaks and electronic sounds. now, theres nothing wrong with that, any good artist can appreciate all other forms of art for what they are and what reaction they're trying to get from their audience. so i see/hear the appeal of techno elements in bubble-gum pop music like that. but the reason it sounded so weird is because she was trying to recreate that sound in a live setting, which is foolish at best, and embarrassing at the worst (right ashley simpson? jk. (but not really)). so at the beginning of her songs, when its just her and the microphone, she sounds amazing (and i'd be willing to bet she actually has a really great voice, and then she would have to be exiled bc no one is that pretty, with that great a voice, and not a cylon. jk, again). so i think she needs to work it out with mtv, get unplugged back on the air, (part of a movement to bring MUSIC back to MUSICtelevision), or get in on that crossroads vibe over on CMT, with somebody like, sugarland, or little big town, or even a classic like reba or somebody, how awesome would that be? so, Katy perry, not that you'll ever see this or read this, but on the astronomically small chance you do? get unplugged, do an acoustic album, and show the world that your not all bubble gum pop. that you have a killer voice too.

What's in a Name?

OK, no seriously, WHAT IS THE EVENT!?!?!? this is a tv show that calls itself, "the Event" and yet, wont even tell you what it is. I mean, at least "Lost" had the decency to tell you how'd you feel when it started and when it ended (and pretty much all the time in between!) but "the Event" is a useless title. Unless i guess if you view it as a meta sort of thing, in so much as "the Event" is the event of everyone watching the show, or perhaps its a lesson in appreciation on the events of everyday life, saying that every moment is a big deal. i dont know, it's just annoying.

Not everything on here is gonna be me pontificating or me bitching at the universe. its my "online journal," ya know?

The Greatest Experiment EVER.

So i recently read an article in an issue of Scientific American, that was about how science and democracy are basically the same thing. now most people think that this doesnt really make sense, as the general public's consensus is that science is a step by step process that always results that were sort of predicted, or led to some great discovery. well anyone who's been a scientist for longer than 30 seconds or even cracked a textbook knows how much b.s. that is. science is messy, murky, and the road to discovery is littered with potholes, dead animals, and forks. America is much the same way, or atleast, started that way. the founding fathers often referred the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as "an experiment." and to a certain extent it is, and still is. both science and democracy have feedback loops that alter not only it's current state, but also its future. science has hypothesis manipulation, and democracy has elections. elections are the ultimate in social experimentation. every so often, we tweak the variables a bit, intentionally, or unintentionally, and see who gets elected. it begs the question, if the given "constants" in our experiment change (i.e. constituencies, the economy, the war, etc.), do our variables matter that much more, or that much less? in the first decades of our country, we didn't go looking for fights. it was the british who invaded us in '76. it was the british again in 1812 (also shares a 9/11 reference, if you're so inclined, google it). and the french soon after that. it wasn't until people started attacking our citizens in the world at large (the sinking of the Lusitania by a german U-boat is what brought us into WW1), that we proved ourself top of the heap. and when it happened again in 41, we proved it again. but it was after ww2 that the "experiment" started to turn sour. now don't get me wrong, i love america, i don't think i could ever actually live anywhere else, though i'd love to visit alot of places. but you can't compare to america's freedom. some see it as a burden, others (like myself) a joy. its all a matter of interpretation. but back to the point. after ww2, the military industrial complex had become so bloated and over arching, due to roosevelt's "keen" oversight, that to dismantle it and force it to go back to making cars was impossible. companies had tasted the blood of war. seen the profit margins increase to far beyond anything they could get domestically just making cars and airplanes. so what happened? they paid lobbyists to put the bug in congress' ear, that communism was on the rise. (remember, its congress that declares war, not the president, no matter what a tea party supporter picketing from a lawn chair tells you). they find somebody like McCarthy to hunt down commies in every corner of american society, political, entertainment, even plain old citizens (The Rosenburgs, though it turns out they actually were selling secrets to the commies), and put him center stage, and the cold war is born. America started going around the world and picking fights. Korea, Vietnam, Afganistan (in the 80's, not the '00s). The military industrial complex thrived on this stuff. they left the politics to the politicians. they didnt have to sell "military operations" to america, the politicians did. and every politician that sold america on "stopping the spread of communism" got a cash back kick back, from the corporations that got military contracts. the exact same thing happens today, just not on the battle field, it happens in the cornfield. and the oilfield. why did we invade Kuwait in the 80's? they were sitting on the biggest oil field on the planet, and Saddam started going in and lighting things on fire like a 16 year old with a pack of cigarettes. so our politicians are running our country anymore, corporations our. i mean, lets just be honest about it. japan is. they actually have seats in their senate that belong to corporations. CORPORATIONS! that means, that a company has a vote in how a country is run. this isn't a scifi novel, this is real stuff. there's a reason this country was founded the way it was: FOR the PEOPLE, OF the PEOPLE, and BY the PEOPLE. not for the profit of a corporation, not of a buisness deal, not by a CEO. this is why america votes. TO STAY FREE. if you don't vote, you have no right to bitch. you can be a political as you want, but if you don't respect your responsibility to vote, and it is a responsibility, not a gift or a right, then why are you here? I'm serious. it's right there in the Declaration of independence: "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security." if you have the ability, you have the Responsibility, to vote. research your candidates. whos old, who's new, who's affiliated, who's independant. but get informed. if you think that the country is great the way it is, don't vote. cause by not voting, you increase an incumbents chances to get re-elected. i dont like where the country has gone. but that's what so great about the experiment. it's not designed to end. it was not designed with a specific goal in mind, but a structure for it's continuity and longevity. so, join the great experiment. go out and vote on NOV. 2nd. and keep the experiment going.

The Genius.