As I See It December 7, 2009

Our society is so obsessed with holiday shopping that we have made Black Friday a death day for some unfortunate people.

Many of us are lucky enough to be able to afford gifts and other luxuries such as this cup of coffee.

If every person that purchased a drink like this today gave one quarter away, we would be able to buy gifts for people who were not fortunate enough to be able to spend money on Black Friday.

Something as little as pocket change to us can make a whole holiday for someone else.

IMHO #2 November 23, 2009

http://new.music.yahoo.com/blogs/vivanashvegas/2593/is-new-country-real-country/

In this article, Wendy Gellar writes about how country legend George Jones discriminates against newer country artists with a “pop” feel.  George Jones specifically picks on two women country singers, Taylor Swift and Carrie Underwood. He talks them down because he does not believe their music should be worthy of the title “country”, since it is not the typical old-fashioned sound.

Being a huge country fan myself, I think this is ridiculous. There are many country artists out there who could be considered to also have a “pop” sound and somehow did not get mentioned by Jones. I think he is picking on these two ladies because of their immediate success in both the country and pop music worlds. Keith Urban and Rascal Flatts, for example, both have country hits that play on both country and pop radio, and they are considered icons.

Lately, it is becoming a trend for pop artists to try switching over to country and most become a success. Darius Rucker, the lead singer of Hootie and the Blowfish, recently went country and has already won a CMA for best new artist of the year. If pop and rock artists can make that cross over into country, it is certainly going to happen the other way around.

Music is constantly evolving and it has been since it was first invented. True country fans never give up their old music with the old fashioned sound that Jones is talking about so he should not be upset. He is still a legend in my eyes and I am sure that fellow country fans are with me on that. You can’t have too much good music though, and if fans enjoy both the new and old sound then that just means more songs to choose from.

Wonderful Word of the Week #10 November 6, 2009

My tenth word of the week is usurp.

According to my Mac dictionary, usurp means:

Verb: to take illegally or by force

Example sentence: The church had usurped upon the domain of the state.

I had not come across any words this week that jumped out at me as a word I did not know. Therefore, I went through some articles on Yahoo’s homepage to see if I could find a good word while reading them. I found two words that I had never heard before, so it was very successful. The first one I read was the word “usurped”. It was in an article about the Hollywood thefts that have been going on lately. The sentence read, “The thieves decided to usurp possessions of famous Hollywood starlets.” Even though this article was painful to read, at least I found my word inside it.

Japanese Memorial October 29, 2009

I pass the Japanese Memorial going home from school everyday and I am very glad I finally got a chance to look at it up close. It is so detailed and overwhelming consisting of many little parts. I would have to say my favorite vignette is one with adolescent Japanese-American boys. They seem very proud as a group of them are gathered together saluting a very big American flag. Their faces are adorned with smiles and they appear to be wearing uniforms that closely resemble boy scout outfits. I think they watch their older brothers go off to help fight for America and the younger boys cannot wait to get older so they can feel the pride of fighting, too. Of course, they might be slightly naive and not know exactly what is in store for them if they were to ever go off and fight, yet they want to make their families proud.

Wonderful Word of the Week #9 October 29, 2009

My ninth word of the week is repudiate.

According to my Mac dictionary, repudiate means:

Verb: refuse to accept or be associated with

Example sentence: She has repudiated policies associated with previous party leaders.

My boyfriend and I try to help one another with our homework as much as we can. The other night, he had an assignment to read different case studies and summarize them. He read one out loud to me so I could help him decipher it. It was about breast augmentation and its link to diseases that women contract after getting breast implants. One of the sentences talked about how scientists repudiated the fact that the diseases were linked to the implants. He had to slow down to try and pronounce the word, and neither of us knew what it meant. Therefore, I knew I had to use it for this week’s word.

Wonderful Word of the Week #8 October 24, 2009

My eighth word of the week is antebellum.

According to my Mac dictionary, antebellum means:

Adj: occuring or existing before a particular war, especially the American Civil War

Example sentence: They were from the conventions of the antebellum South.

I attended a country concert this weekend where one of my favorite new groups, Lady Antebellum, performed. They have been on the country scene for almost a year now and I had never realized, until recently, that I had no clue what antebellum meant. I decided to look it up and use it for my word of the week this week and I am glad I did. Even if I had to guess what antebellum meant, my guess would have been so far off from the actual definition. Although I know what it means now, I still don’t know why this group choose this name, so this will be the next thing I look up.

IMHO #1 October 19, 2009

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/AheadoftheCurve/richard-heene-balloon-boy-family-face-charges/Story?id=8856041&page=1

By now, the story of the “balloon boy” should have been heard by anyone and everyone who watches a news station or visits Yahoo. People were even talking about it on Facebook hours after it happened and the news story ran. This is how I first clicked on the link and read the story of the possible missing boy inside a runaway balloon.

Now, since they ended up finding him in a box in the attic, authorities want to charge the family with a few possible felonies for making the whole thing up. They believe the family planned it right from the beginning as a way to catch the media’s attention and even try to get a reality show deal out of it.

In my opinion, I really think this whole story is ridiculous and should not be taking up the most popular areas of our media. It is not a funny or interesting story. It is simply a group of people trying to get attention, and now we are giving them exactly what they wanted. They should be very pleased with themselves because it seems like this is exactly what they desired to accomplish, minus the reality show (for now). I do not understand how the authorities discovered and can prove that this family planned this as a hoax all along. In all the articles I have read about it, it does not say how they confessed or what they said exactly, just that the authorities confirm it was a hoax.

Although it might be slightly harsh to charge this family with a series of felonies, I think that is what they may need to do in order for this family will take for them to learn a lesson from all this. I researched one of the possible felony charges to see if it would make a good fit for this case of the runaway balloon. For example, they want to charge the family with conspiracy, and according to lectlaw.com, conspiracy is an agreement in criminal purposes in which each member becomes the partner of the other member.

http://www.lectlaw.com/def/c103.htm

If the husband and wife of that family did plan and agree to do this they could certainly classify for conspiracy and should be charged. If anything, I think they deserve to get charged because this whole scheme was very pathetic and a waste of time that they should be spending playing appropriate, fun games with their kids.

Wonderful Word of the Week #7 October 15, 2009

My seventh word of the week is ominous.

According to my Mac dictionary, ominous means…

Adj: giving the impression that something bad or unpleasant is going to happen

Example sentence: He walked into the haunted house and heard an evil and ominous laugh thunder through the room.

This word jumped out at me the other day when I was watching the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall. There is a scene about half way through the movie where the main character, Peter, is creating background music for a popular crime scene show. He states that the music is mostly a composition of “dark and ominous tones”. From the context, I could assume that ominous meant something evil and wicked that complimented the word “dark”, yet I never knew the exact definition. Now, I do.

Wonderful Word of the Week #6 October 14, 2009

My sixth word of the week is perpetual.

According to dictionary.com perpetual means:

Adj: continuing or enduring forever; everlasting

Example sentence: That droning lecture our teacher gave us seem to go on perpetually.

Once again, this is a word that I am not personally new to. Lately, I have been trying to find words that I hear in every day life, and although I can usually take a guess the definition because of the word’s context, I do not really know the exact, written definition. Perpetual is that sort of word for me. I heard in on the show Project Runway the other day when Tim Gunn was giving a critique to one of the designers. He told them that “…if that dress went down the runway it would be one perpetual walk”.

NPR Interview October 13, 2009

I listened to an interview that Terry Gross gave Chris Gaffney, a member of the band called The Hacienda Brothers, in 2006. Her voice was very smooth and made it enjoyable and easy to listen to, unlike many other disc jockeys I have heard.

It was clear that Gross knew some facts about Gaffney before interviewing him, especially about his background before he got into music. For example, she brought up the fact that he used to be a a boxer without him mentioning it himself. She also knew that he took accordion lessons ever since he was a child before he started boxing.

The questions she asked him were very simple and to the point, giving Gaffney plenty of freedom to supply long, detailed answers. She mostly asked him what a few of his specific songs were written about and how he got into the crazy transition from boxing to music. She built up to some of her questions by first playing a sample of one of The Hacienda Brothers’ songs. For example, about thirty seconds of the song “Cowboys to Girls” was played and next she asked him why they did this song. There was no need for follow-up questions from Gross since Gaffney was very meticulous in each of his answers, leaving me, as the listener, with no questions. Gaffney gave no inadequate answers so Gross did not need to make up for blank spots.

The strategy that Gross had was so hidden that I did not notice it until after listening to the interview. It seemed that all of Gaffney’s answers to a previous questions led her to ask her next question. This made the interview seem natural and unprepared. I learned from listening to this interview that not all radio talk can be boring, which I thought previously. I also learned that it is good to prepare a solid interview but there is time, such as this case, where the interviewee supplied the best material.

Although the relationship between Gross and Gaffney seemed to be just fan and idol, they spoke like they were good friends.