Dearest Bloggers

As we close in on the school year, I would like to say that it has been an absolute pleasure being in class with all of you guys.  I am thankful that this semester is so close to being over, and I thank God for being here with me every step of the way!!  So... How does summer sound to everybody???  I am so stocked to get back home and relax some.  My main goal over this summer is to get a new car.  My current one is a real piece of junk, so I am hoping to save up enough money to go to an auction and buy  a fairly new car and then sink 2000 to 3000 dollars into fixing it up REAL NICE!!!  I would like to give a shout out to my number one girl and sidekick for life, WHITNEY BOWERS!!!  Whitney, you are an amazing person and you have made this year absolutely unforgettable.  They say college will be the best days of our lives, and although I think things will only get better from here, I do realize that this past year has been the best year of my life!  Oh, and Mr. Campbell, no one is going to forget you; you are way too crazy for that to happen!  Well, I hope everyone is working on their portfolios.  Have an amazing weekend and God bless!  Quiero mi vida!!!  Bye :)

someone Please Help!!!

So I have felt like I have been very far behind on my blogs.  We are only suppose to be doing one per week, and I know I have skipped some weeks, but I have like 19 different entries on my blog.  I thought that maybe it included comments on other blogs too, but that is not the case.  I remember doing each of these blogs, but I am not sure how it is possible that I have so many.  I also know that there were some specific blogs that we had to do, but even if we had one of those every week, which we didn't, and if I felt good and did an extra one on top of that every week, that would still only get me 16 posts.  I guess I will keep doing one a week, but does anyone else have anything like this going on?  Hope to hear from you guys soon.

Cake Boss

I LOVE THIS SHOW!!!!  Cake Boss is a great show.... they do the craziest things on here.  Huge cakes shaped like all kinds of ish.  It is crazy!!!  Whenever I watch shows like this, I always want to do what they are doing.  When I watch this show, I want to open my own bakery.  When I watch any kind of Angelina Jolie movie, I want to be a spy!  When I watch Hell's Kitchen, I want to be a chef.  When I watch Million Dollar Listings, I want to be a high end real estate agent.  There is so much that I want to do in life... Like more than I can probably squeeze into one life.  But that makes me feel good, because I know that there will always be something that I can pursue to keep myself entertained and occupied in life.  I feel so small sometimes when I think about how big the world is and all the things I want to accomplish, but I am confident that I will be able to get where I want to in life.  I hope everyone is doing well.  Talk to you all soon.

Hmmm...

Sometimes I feel like I am so behind whenever I have a class where something is due every week.  Like with English, we have to do a blog once a week, and sometimes we do not have a blog and sometimes we have a specific blog and I just feel like it is so difficult to keep up with.  Things get much more complicated whenever I have to do this for more than one class.  In Spanish, we have to do a cultural activity every week, but we upload them to Moodle.  My teacher does not always have to link up for us to upload it, so I will think that we do not have one, and then she puts the link up 2 days after the forum is due (on Fridays)!!!  Then I am not sure which ones I have done.  I do not think we had one over Spring break, but I think she wanted us to do a post about Spring Break about 2 weeks after the fact.  I think doing weekly assignments are not the best idea.  After a while, it becomes boring and student began to develop a nonchalant attitude toward these assignments.  Oh well,. I have no more English after this semester, so I will weather the storm.  I still like Professor Campbell though.  Well, I hope to see everyone Tuesday!!!  I'm glad we do not have much of a class Tuesday :)

End of the Semester!!!

Well, we are closing in on this semester.  Everything has flown by this year!!!  I cannot believe it is so close to the end of the year!  We are going to be graduating before we know it :)  For me, it seems like with every year that pass, time speeds up.  And I have a theory as to why.  (I have a lot of theories) haha   Although each year contains the same amount of time as the year before, time seems to speed up because of how old we are.  Think about this, when you turned 6, a year equaled 1/6 of your entire life!!!  That seems like a pretty good chunk of time.  But when you turn 18, a year only equals 1/18 of your life.  The older we get, the less weight 1 year has on the overall composure of our lives.  When you are 18, there are 18 years of memory and life behind you, and the next year will not provide as many experiences and memories as the past 18.  I think that is why years seem to be shorter and shorter the older we get.  Well, that is my spill for the week, I will see all of you in class Tuesday!!!

Wow!!

This 42 year old woman let a suicide note as her Facebook status, and her friends mocked the status thinking that she was exaggerating or just messing around.  I have hear of teenagers leaving suicide notes on Facebook, but I have never heard of a grown woman doing it.  It is crazy to think that some people feel that their lives are not worth living... Everyone is worth something.  God does not make mistakes, if it was time for you to die, then you would already be dead.  Things get better, I swear it!!!  Hold your head high, you are worth it!  Here is a link to the article.

Facebook Suicide Note

Hello There

Well it sure has been a while peeps.  I have had such a busy Spring Break... I was down in Ft Lauderdale and went down to Miami too!  Which, by the way, I feel in love with that city.  I am going to live there someday, maybe I will have my own private island too.  I went kayaking, which was pretty fun, and saw two dolphins that got pretty close to my kayak.  If Queens wasn't giving me so much money to go here, and if they didn't have awesome job placement, then I would just up and move to Florida... Oh well!  You will find me down there someday.  Um, well I guess I am not ready to get back into the swing of things with school, but I guess I do not have much of a choice.  Anywho, I will talk at you guys later.  Bye!

Getting Caught Up On Homework

Yes fellow students, it is close to 4 in the morning.  Why you ask, am I blogging this late/early?  Well, there are a few reasons, and all of them are noteworthy, so here I go.

     1)  Last week I was really far behind on all of my homework and I felt like my head was going to explode and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't seem to get things rolling.  So I have decided to get a lot of homework done ahead of time this week... which leads me into my next point.
     2)  I am doing this homework at 4 on a Saturday morning because I got home from Queens not too long ago and I live way up a mountain, where there is nothing to do but twiddle my thumbs, or do homework!!! Ugh! Oh well, and plus, I am not very tired.  My parents do not even have internet up here, because they are old and things like that scare them, but the neighbor does, and I am still his wifi.  (His password to wifi, by the way, is quite hilarious.  "belikemike" haha  I know this man next door does not shoot hoops, plus anyway, he is white).
     3)  Today, as in Saturday, is going to be kind of boring, and I know I am going to want to lay in my AMAZING bed for a really long time, so I figure I can just sleep in until noon-ish or later, so when I wake up, no one will be at my house to disturb me, which means I will be able to rest in please without worrying about anything.  Which will be very nice!

Well, there might be some other sub-conscience reasons that I can not think about right now, but that is OK, I guess they just will not be mentioned.  By the way, when I click PUBLISH POST, I will be officially caught up until Wednesday in ALL of my classes.  Anyway, I am going to comment on a few blogs and then head off to bed.  I hope everyone enjoys this AMAZINGLY BEAUTIFUL weekend.  Bye!

I Might Be Thouroghly Confused

hmmm... well my phone does not let me do capital letters so do not judge me.   anywho, i thought that we were going to learn to do research today in class.... apparently not... oh well, i read that we could win candy in class today, so i am as pumped as a bicycle tire.  oh btw, i am caught up with all my work... im very happy about that.  well i will see everyone shortly... bye

Bullies or Murderers?

     I am planning on writing my argumentative paper about bullying on Facebook.  I am still not very sure what my thesis will be, or what stance I am going to take on the issue, but I really want to write a paper about it. 
     I read an article that discussed a few people who committed suicide after being harassed and bullied on Facebook for a long period of time.  I was shocked at how many people actually took their lives because of the way they were being treated.  There was one case when a 9 year old boy was found dead in a nurse's bathroom at his school where he had hung himself.  This article really brings to light the effects of bullying, especially among young children.  Here in the link to the article, if I find any more interesting articles I will just post them to the blog.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/cyber-bullying-factor-suicide-massachusetts-teen-irish-immigrant/story?id=9660938

Why do I hate this class?

Financial Accounting will be the death of me.  I will however, stick it out in this freaking class because it is required for a business major.  But thus accent that this lady has distracts me, her methods are not very effective, and the time just drags on and on.  As much as I love numbers and math, I do NOT like this evil class.  Oh well, life will go on.  Welp, all I can say is FML from 3:00-4:15 on Mondays and Wednesdays.  Oh yes, I have a test today in that call, by the way.  So I will go sulk in my misfortune.  See you guys later.

My Ads

These are 3 of ads that Facebook generated for me...

Sports Car Insurance - I believe that they put this on my Facebook because they saw my uninsured Lamborghini in one of my albums... but the weirdest part is that they knew it was uninsured, because I totally did not tell anyone that I had been driving it illegally and I definitely know that I did not post that on my wall anywhere... hmmmmmm

5 Free Songs on Itunes - This would obviously be because they saw that I have downloaded over 2,000 free songs off of Limewire, and it is kind of making Itunes jealous.  Maybe they think they while I am getting my free 5 songs that I will absolutely fall in love with their service and the user-friendly interface and just decide to do all of my music through them.  (It will not work though, they are just getting screwed out of like $5.)

Sears - I used to work for them, and so I am figuring they are trying to subconsciously put themselves in the back of my mind, trying to get me to come back for the Christmas.  They are doing this because I am the nest thing that has ever happened to the company and since I have left they have slowly been going out of business.  That is what happens when the best thing since sliced bread goes off to college... franchises go out of business.

So those are the ads that Facebook so ingeniously placed on my wall... What would I do with other these guiding lights in my life?

And how is that working for you?

How many of you guys have seen this before?  I just cannot understand for the life of me why someone would put their child on a leash.  It is ineffective and it just makes these people look semi-ignorant.  If you are one of those people that agree with this type of "control" thingy (I do not even know what to call it) I would be mean to you, but I definitely not going to sugar coat what I am going to say, and for the record.... I disagree with you.  Have you ever seen a kid behaving properly with one of these leashes on... NO!!!!  Why? Because the kid is always too far away from the parent for them to reach down and smack them in the head!  I think it is just pure laziness on the parents part and completely counter-productive.  I think that if you want your child to act right in public, then you should step up as a parent and teach your child how to act in public (raising a kid correctly is still part of a parents job for anyone who might have missed that).  Although I pulled this picture of a site that is suppose to be fun, I think it just exemplifies the ignorance of some people.  Really??? Please just learn to control your child.  USE that rod of correction and DRIVE your little brats far from the urge to do EVIL!!! lol (Evil is a little strong of a word, that is the only reason I put the "lol")  Anyway, this is my opinion.  See you guys in class. Bye! :))

This Semester is Crazy

Hmmm... I guess this is going to happen every semester, but I do not like the fact that midterms all fall in the same week.  It is just too much at one time.  i understand that all of the classes start at the same time, so we are all midway through the term, but they could do a few things to make this a little easier.  Like have a 3 week span for us to have our midterms, and each department could schedule their midterms at different times.  Like Math midterms could be a little earlier than core midterms, which could come before business midterms or something like that.  I really do think that would be much better.  I sure there would be some sort of flaw in this scheme, but ANYTHING is better than all of the exams at the same time :(  Oh well, until they change the way they do things, I will just keep having these horrible week long stretches in the middle of my semesters.

(By the way, this is my blog for last week... I got a little behind and I feel very horrible and sorry for being such a slacker... see everyone in class tomorrow)

Operaton Repo!!!!!

     OMG I am so excited!  Operation Repo's new season primers tonight and I just might die!  It is the funniest show on earth!  It is where they go around and repo cars that people have not been making payments on.  And as you can imagine, some people get real crazy when their cars are being repoed.
     Anywho, I am going to watch the primer with my friend Whitney Bowers.  It is actually a really important cornerstone in our friendship because Whitney and I spent A LOT, and I mean A LOT, of time bonding in Astronomy as we watched clips of this show from my Blackberry!  Yeah, that is right, in Astronomy.  Don't worry, we both still passed the class... if you are worrying, it is because you missed the part about me having a Blackberry... turns out that the internet has all kinds of Astronomy information on it.
     Well, this show starts in 47 minutes so I am going to go ahead and finish up a little bit more homework before I go over there.  See you all in class. 

HAHAHAHAHAHA

Someone, whose name will remain unmentioned, is trying to get ready for the club. ha  Sometimes a black and white shirt does NOT go with a black and white skirt!!!  This is so funny, watching this chick trying to find a matching shirt.  I guess this is why it takes girls so freaking long to get ready.  I mean, its just the club, it is not like anyone finds anyone worth while at the clubs, but I was just informed that you still have to dress to impress ha.  Good times!  Well no picture to be uploaded this time, because someone just might murder me.  Bye!

The Social Network Movie Review

I chose the site pluggedinonline.com to find my movie review for The Social Network.  It is a Christian-based site that reviews movies and breaks down absolutely every aspect of the movie.  The reviews they have contain a lot a SPOILERS, but that is only if you read the whole review.  One can choose to just read the first introduction section which gives a great feel of the movie, to decided whether one wants to go see the movie.  I am going to post the whole review, because a review covers the whole movie.  The reason why I choose this one is because I believe that it will in a slightly different format that most are used to seeing.  It is more geared towards family.  It is a review sire my mother has used for a long time, and it has kept me from seeing numerous movies.  Oh well :(((  Here is the like and the whole review.

http://www.pluggedin.com/videos/2011/q1/socialnetwork.aspx

The Social Network

Will you be my friend?

It's a question pregnant with meaning, dependent on context. Said on a school playground it means something. Said in a singles bar or by a politician, it means something else. Said with a push of an online button, it might mean anything. With the advent of Facebook, people can be "friends" with strangers, enemies and coffee shops. And we begin to wonder what the word friend really means in the Information Age.

In a club near Harvard University in late 2003, Erica Albright tells Mark Zuckerberg—future businessman, future billionaire, future inventor of Facebook—that she just wants to be friends. She doesn't mean it. Few do when they're breaking up. Nor, perhaps, would Mark grasp the concept if she did. You get the sense, watching The Social Network, that Mark has little experience with friendship.

Arrogant, angry and oh so brilliant, he interacts with people as most would with a computer, relates to a computer as most would with people. And in the wake of Erica's rejection, he flees to his dorm room and opens his soul to his laptop screen, flooding a blog with bitter put-downs and unspoken rejoinders—venting and processing perhaps the only way he knows. And while doing so, he patches together bits of code and unleashes a bit of vitriol on women in general—creating an online game of "who's hot, who's not" on the Harvard campus.

He calls his work Facemash, and it nearly gets him expelled, partly because he hacks into Harvard's secure network to launch it. But it also earns him a measure of fame, of notoriety. It's a taste of the popularity Mark pretends to eschew but obviously craves. Soon, members of Harvard's ruling caste ask for his help in crafting a campus-only social network, and he agrees. But instead of hammering out code for his new employers, he begins working on a networking site of his own—a site he initially calls thefacebook.com.

Within days of launching, it's the rage at Harvard. The following month, The Facebook expands to a handful of other campuses. Financially backed by roomie Eduardo Saverin, the site then earns a rabid following among tens of thousands of collegians around the world and interest from entrepreneurs. People are meeting, socializing and hooking up online. And friend instantly becomes a verb.

Mark didn't understand friendship, The Social Network tells us, so he redefined it.

Positive Elements

The Social Network is based on Ben Mezrich's book The Accidental Billionaires, written largely with the help of Eduardo Saverin. Little surprise, then, that the big-screen version of Eduardo is the film's most sympathetic character.

Amiable and winsome, Eduardo is Mark's only true friend. As the rest of Harvard ignores Mark, Eduardo supports him, both personally and—as The Facebook slowly takes flight—financially. He ponies up the first $1,000 for the venture, becoming Facebook's chief financial officer, then sweetens the pot to $19,000 when Mark sets up shop in Palo Alto, Calif. He's not the film's hero, but its everyman. And it's through Eduardo's eyes that we see Facebook's brilliant and brutal beginnings. He is, in some respects, a Horatio Alger character … ultimately betrayed by the American Way. He works hard and plays by the rules, only to find that the rules have changed around him.

Twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss are more extreme examples of this same dynamic. Wealthy and powerful, they represent old-school Harvard—including its semi-chivalrous code of conduct. They believe they came up with the idea for Facebook. But even when it seems obvious to them that Mark pilfered their idea and used it as his own, they decline at first to sue "because we're gentlemen of Harvard."

Such ideals seem quaint within The Social Network, but while the film chides the Winklevosses a little, it saves its harshest criticism for the amoral system that swept such notions of fair play aside. The new dot-com ethos, embodied by Napster founder Sean Parker, is smooth and brilliant and ethically vapid—with Sean serving as a postmodern Mephistopheles. As such, The Social Network becomes something of a morality play—a tragic paradox in which a site based on connectivity leaves its creators disconnected from what matters. Though you'll find no real heroes here, The Social Network's narrative moral underpinnings are difficult to miss.

One specific item of positivity: The movie goes out of its way to remind moviegoers that just because a stray (hurtful) thought manages to skitter through their heads doesn't mean they should write it down and post it to the Web. More on that in my conclusion.

Spiritual Content

When Mark tiredly closes his eyes after launching The Facebook, someone facetiously asks him if he's praying.

Sexual Content

The first time we meet Sean, he's waking up in the dorm room of a Stanford undergrad. We see the Stanford woman in revealing underwear and, later, see her bare back as she removes a towel to get into the shower. We learn that Sean's been involved with Facebook interns and other young women, too. He parties with several woman—one of whom takes off her blouse (we see her bra) so Sean and others can snort cocaine off her body.

But Parker's far from the only character preoccupied with sex. As both Mark and Eduardo allude to, one of Facebook's most popular features for the college set is its "relationship status." It tells users, in Mark's words, "Are you having sex or aren't you?" We see students dance in underwear and play strip poker. Women kiss each other and cavort in a club wearing bikini-like outfits.

Two girls hit on Mark and Eduardo, and all of them end up in bathroom stalls. Between the two couples, we see pants being unbuckled and unzipped, shirts ripped open, groping, panting, etc. One girl moves down to give oral sex.

Victoria's Secret gets a shout-out, and Mark discusses his ex-girlfriend's bra size on his blog. He suggests to her that the only reason they gained access to a particular club is because she slept with the door guy. (She denies it.) A poster reads, "Big Boobs and Brains." Someone makes a reference to necrophilia.

Violent Content

Several characters threaten, with varying degrees of seriousness, bodily harm to others—from hitting to using a Glock. Eduardo's unhinged girlfriend nearly sets his apartment on fire when she purposely burns a gift he gave her. One of the Winklevosses breaks off a doorknob.

Crude or Profane Language

Two and a half f-words and nearly 20 s-words. Jesus' and God's names are abused a half-dozen times each. God's is paired with "d‑‑n." Other curse words include "a‑‑," "b‑‑ch" and "h‑‑‑." Zuckerberg's name is twisted into a crude expression. An obscene gesture is made.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Sean is busted by police for cocaine possession. He's caught with the powder on his hands shortly after snorting a line off a girl's stomach. We hear rumors that he's used drugs before. Two girls share a gigantic bong. Others light up joints and/or cigarettes during a college party.

Lots of characters, many underage, down everything from beer to mixed drinks to whiskey. Mark admits that, as he creates Facemash, he's a "little intoxicated." And he's fond of finding out whether others can code while drunk, forcing prospective Facebook techies into a wild drinking game while testing their abilities.

Other Negative Elements

Sean relishes the idea that Napster turned the music industry on its head by triggering the music piracy stampede. He comments that it might not have been a good business move, but it "p‑‑‑ed a lot of people off." Eduardo loses his influence in Facebook through duplicitous means. When the police bust up a drug party, a row of college girls all lie about their age. We see a student throwing up during a hazing ritual.

Conclusion

Though based on real-world research, The Social Network is a work of fiction. Its characters bear recognizable names and some of the events they participate in truly did happen, but they may or may not actually be like their real-world counterparts. This is not a documentary. It's a drama—albeit one that the real Mark Zuckerberg would rather you not see. As screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (Charlie Wilson's War, The West Wing) tells The Daily Beast, "He's got right now—frankly, because of me—the whole world wondering if he's an a‑‑hole, OK? He's got to pick up the paper every day and see that."

This film may indeed cause some to look at Zuckerberg—who seems to have more confidence and charisma than we see onscreen—in a harsher light. I doubt, however, that it'll impact how folks use Zuckerberg's landmark achievement. Those familiar with Facebook know how it's used, misused and sometimes abused. Many probably know something about its recurring privacy issues and sneakily addictive games. Frankly, they probably know more about that sort of thing than Sorkin himself, who admits he doesn't use Facebook. They'll continue to use it if FarmVille stays fun and it allows them to stay in touch with Aunt Gertrude across the country. Whether Zuckerberg was a jerk when he created the thing will remain beside the point for most.

And the film's makers seem to know this. The Social Network—a well-crafted story of modern-day creativity and greed—points a lot of fingers at Facebook's creators, but talks very little about Facebook itself. We know it's "addictive" because a Stanford coed tells us so. We know it's a billion-dollar idea because Sean says it is. We know folks think it's cool because we're told how many students have flocked to it. But Sorkin and director David Fincher (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Fight Club) spend very little time critiquing this mode of communication itself … except for this recurring caution:

Just as thefacebook.com is beginning to take off on the Harvard campus, Mark walks up to Erica and asks if he can speak with her alone. Erica shrugs him off. Why would he want to speak to her alone yet feel fine speaking about her to the entire school through his blog?

"The Internet isn't written in pencil, Mark," she tells him. "It's written with ink."

Facebook, like most other online modes of communication, is a tool—something which we can use for good or ill. (The good part better be true; Plugged In has its own page.) Zuckerberg's creation has allowed us to connect to people in new and exciting ways, but it's given us yet another avenue in which we can hurt or offend those we care about, too. Sometimes we write things we'd never say, post things we're sometimes ashamed to even think. We actually live in the Too-Much-Information Age, where we confess not to a priest in the quiet confines of a church, but to an entire online universe.

The Social Network, if it has a practical message at all, tells us that the wonderful promise of online communication brings with it a cadre of new temptations and problems. And we're shown some of those in an up-close-and-personal way. We're told that the movie's main characters never paused to consider such things. But we, the users, might want to do just that.

The Wordle Thing

Hello.  I am not quite sure how people got the image of their wordle thing on here, but I am going to past the link in the blog so you guys can go see if you all want to.  It is pretty epic, if I do say so myself.
http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/3023372/Untitled

Visual Rhetoric

http://www.thepoliticalmovement.com/2010/06/17/collection-of-bp-oil-spill-political-cartoons/bp-oil-spill-political-cartoon-06/
 The message being conveyed here is that the BP Oil Company is trying to "right" the wrong they have produced by issuing letters of apology.  These letters of apologies, however, are not making the lives of the people and animals they harmed any better.  That bird on the shore does not care for a "sorry", it cares about the poison that is slowly killing it; the bird cares about the unprepared company and how irresponsible they were.  Although the death of animals have been brought to its attention, BP is still trying to redeem itself by saying, "Well, we said sorry".  The intended audience is really anyone who sees the cartoon.  It is meant for those who are both angry and passive toward BP.  The "writer" is someone who is looking out for the well being of this world and the life that it supports.  I believe that this is a very effective political cartoon because it makes the BP executives seem like very ignorant and careless people (Which they are).

My Best Friend

Well, as some of you guys know, WHITNEY BOWERS is my best friend!!!  We are always chilling together and we always have each others backs!!!  I honestly could not ask for a better best friend.  Whitney is one of the most amazing girls I know.  She is fierce and refined.  WPB is my home-slice hahaha
Here is a pic... DIAMOND is also in this picture... she is a bad (in a good sense) chick too!!  We all stay on point!