pointless

why does no one read anymore? instead people sit staring into computer screens for hours on end, pretending to shoot people or maim them with their cars. it is exactly this type of violent stimulation that has caused today's youth to become more and more aggressive. ALSO! these videogames severely limit your ability to think for yourself and greatly stunt your imagination. think about it, when you watch a movie and THEN read the book, you only think of the characters and situations in a certain way. the characters are predetermined for you. you only picture them as the actors. and the setting can only be as specific as what you may have seen. when you read, your imagination has a free reign to picture and create whatever it wants. it can come up with beautiful pictures that movies could only dream of achieving.
harry potter is an excellent example. when i read the goblet of fire, i had this moment, when harry was fighting the dragon, where i imagined the whole scenario. AND IT WAS SO MUCH BETTER IN MY HEAD THAN IT WAS ON FILM! the drama was so much more intense, the emotions were like your own, i could see through the characters eyes, and i saw it how I wanted to see it.
people talk all the time about wanting an escape, well how about rather than turning on your stupid auto theft 500000 or whatever they are on now, try escaping into your own mind. read.

BELIEF/JOHN MAYER

Last week in class we were discussing morality and ethics. We had an epic debate about trying to save puppies from being punted through goal posts and grandmothers of autistic children locking themselves in the bathroom to keep you from getting her keys (I still don’t think she was a good g-ma, she clearly was too concerned with herself to save the kid…). Professor M brought up the point that people have certain beliefs and views as to what is ethical/moral and what is not. Different cultures especially vary. And if you were to come in as a complete stranger to those cultures, you would surely think they were barbarians, yet to them punting puppies is a sacred tradition.
Well I am very opinionated on this topic and therefore was very sad when our elluminate session got canceled—I had come up with an AMAZING idea.
For anyone who has heard John Mayer’s song “Belief” you know my stance (for those of you who don’t know it, get on that ASAP, and I am placing the lyrics at the end). Basically he says that beliefs aren’t like clothes or fashion trends. They are deeply rooted in you and are the essence of your being. You die to defend them. There is no way a stranger could come in and change someone’s beliefs with logical argument. Because beliefs aren’t logical. That is what make them beliefs. It doesn’t matter what anyone says, that is what you believe, and you are sticking to it.
Obviously if it is something factual that can be proved wrong… but even then people find ways to deny the truth. Take the holocaust for example. There are people, to this day, that believe that is all made up. No matter how much evidence you show them, they will not change their minds. I will end on that note and allow you all to peruse the genius of Mr. Mayer. ☺

Belief lyrics:
Is there anyone who
Ever remembers changing there mind from
The paint on a sign?
Is there anyone who really recalls
Ever breaking rank at all
For something someone yelled real loud one time

Everyone believes
In how they think it ought to be
Everyone believes
And they're not going easily

Belief is a beautiful armor
But makes for the heaviest sword
Like punching under water
You never can hit who you're trying for

Some need the exhibition
And some have to know they tried
It's the chemical weapon
For the war that's raging on inside

Everyone believes
From emptiness to everything
Everyone believes
And no ones going quietly

We're never gonna win the world
We're never gonna stop the war
We're never gonna beat this
If belief is what we're fighting for

What puts a hundred thousand children in the sand
Belief can
Belief can
What puts the folded flag inside his mother's hand
Belief can
Belief can

in our best interest?

Why do we as humans, who are supposedly acting in our own best interests, continuously place ourselves in unhealthy relationships? I don’t just mean abusive relationships. Relationships can be unhealthy if they cause you to act a certain way, if they make you feel a certain way. Sometimes, the other person is completely unaware of how the relationship changes you, or makes you feel. So why do we continue to cling on to those relationships? Is it that we hope there might be a change? Are we just irrationally throwing ourselves into something just to try to feel like we belong? Or is it that we unconsciously want to change, want to be something – someone – else. Do our relationships even exist? Or are they simply fabricated in our minds as wishful thoughts?
Is there some thing, some urge, some genetic code, in us that makes us want to be part of a larger whole? I think maybe we want to be part of something so much, we almost believe we are part of it. And THAT is why we cling on to those relationships. We want so badly to belong, to feel loved and accepted, that we are willing to put ourselves through heartache and pain. If we were acting in our best interests, would we do that?

headaches

what causes a headache? is it simply just chemicals colliding in the wrong way and making you miserable? if that is the case why is it they always seem to occur at the most in opportune times. over the past week, i have had 4 POUNDING headaches. so bad, im pretty sure the people next door heard them. are they stress related? are they anger related? i can't see why being happy would cause a headache, otherwise im pretty sure people would be walking around with them most of the time. whatever causes them, the out come is always the same: pain, unpleasantness, and - i say this without shame - grumpiness. i guess on the bright side, you can at least count on them to always be that way. at least one thing in this world is consistent.

Choices

i have recently come to the conclusion that life is all about choices. at first this might sound obvious; you choose where you want to go to school, you choose what you wear everyday. but i have figured out one key choice that im pretty sure, most people haven't ever considered a choice. i don't need to get into the reasons of why i came to this conclusion, but i think that more people should give this thought.

the relationships you choose to have, are more important and meaningful than those you are born into. i am not saying by any means that your friend is more important than your mother, im saying you have the CHOICE to make your friend more important than your mother. i choose to have a relationship with my mother, i choose to have my mother be my best friend. basically what i'm trying to say is that you don't have to like your family. just because you are born into a family, does not mean you actually BELONG to it. you can choose to belong if you would like -- the bond is therefore doubly strong. but for those people who aren't exactly born into the best gene pool (read: abusive families, etc), it's not fair to them. they should not be forced to "love" families who mistreat them--it's not fair. i don't believe blood is thicker than water, i believe love is thicker than water

9-9-08

Does anyone have any common decency anymore? It seems to me that my generation is severely lacking in the courtesy department. I was brought up with the beliefs that if you make plans with someone, you go through with those plans. When you go out with someone on the weekend, you stay with that person. When you go to the movies with a friend, you don’t spend the entire time texting someone else! To me it seems like these basic common courtesies are not just ignored, but often scoffed at, by most people.
I cannot tell you the number of times that I have made plans with someone to only end up either being ditched for something better, or being practically ignored while my friend sent oooey goooey messages back and forth with her boyfriend.
Case in point: this past weekend I went out with some friends. It was meant to be a girls’ night out (yes boys, one of those dreaded things where we basically ignore you all). We were planning on going to a friend’s frat. The party didn’t start until 10 and probably wouldn’t really get going until 11:30 or midnight, but we were looking forward to lots of fun. One of the girls suggested going to one of the apartment complexes first, give the frat a chance to get more crowded.
Guess what happened next? That’s right turns out the only reason she wanted to go to the apartment complex was because her boyfriend was there. She immediately ditched us in favor for her little boy toy. The rest of us ended up getting stuck in a sketchy apartment where we didn’t know anyone. Finally we decided we would leave and she could stay with her bf. The rest of us walked—IN THE POURING RAIN—back to our dorm and never even heard from our so-called friend for the rest of the night. It was only the next afternoon when she came wandering back into the dorm that she acknowledged we had left.
Now, I don’t know about you all, but I find this very rude. If you claim you want to hang out, hang out. If you wanted to hang out with your boyfriend you shouldn’t have made plans with me, you should have made them with him.
I have nothing against boyfriends, I think they are great and can be a great source of comfort and friendship. I’m friends with many of my friends boyfriends. So my argument is not with them. It is with the people who find it acceptable to ditch when they find something better; the people always looking over my shoulder for something else to come along. If you are truly that desperate to hang out with someone else, I’d rather not hang out with you. In fact, just don’t call me in the first place.
I guess I can sum up this little rant in a few words: Don’t just blow off your friends, chances are they will last longer than whatever you are chasing after anyways.

9-4-08

So basically this is my first time ever writing a blog and I'm not exactly sure how to go about it. If we are just talking about what happened in class, let me be the first to say, I was incredibly lost. I just switched out of calculus 3 and yesterday was my first day in class. I will completely agree with the girl in the back of the room (sorry I don't know names yet) when she said it seemed like a lot of reading material to cover. When I first looked at the readings, I thought maybe some of them were stuff Dr. M had covered in class...needless to say, they weren't.
I guess I'm supposed to say a little something about myself. My name is Melissa Palmer, I'm a sophomore and a chemistry major here - I have organic chemistry in isat right before this class, so if you see me and I look like the walking dead, that's basically what I am. I'm 18 (turning 19 soon YAY) and I grew up in Northern Virginia.
My mother grew up in an all-Jewish neighborhood in suburban Chicago and my father grew up in a po-dunk town on the Pennsylvania line, riding tractors and working on farms his whole life. I like to compare them to the couple from Green Acres. Since my mom was raised Jewish and my father was raised some form of Christianity, we don't exactly have a religion in my household. I was brought up by standard moral values and taught to be a good person. It's been working pretty well for me so far. As far as my beliefs go, I like to consider myself a liberal and a democrat, but I will fully own up to having a few very right wing values (I’m all for the death sentence).
I am very apprehensive about this coming election. Either way the country will be making history. My dad and I discuss politics all the time and we both agree, the only way Obama can lose at this point is if the young people don't get out and vote. Everyone you talk to says "oh Obama's going to win anyways" but you know what? If everyone thinks that, and no one votes because they think that, we will get stuck with McCain and another 4 years of republican policies. The problem is that the young people come out in great numbers for all the primaries and support the candidates right up until Election Day when laziness gets the best of them.
I noticed there was a person in our class who was taking every opinion/point someone made and turning it into something negative, constantly contradicting and arguing with whatever was said (you probably know who you are). Debate to discuss and expand on ones own opinions is great; arguing just to argue is obnoxious. I would just like to take this opportunity to say this to our young pessimist: every point you made, would only be viable under IDEAL circumstances. I am not bashing your stance, quite on the contrary, all of your statements are true, but at some point you have to stop living in Neverland and become a realist and see that we aren't living in an ideal world. And while we might strive for it, the ideal doesn't happen over night, you can't flip a switch. So while the people in Georgia might not currently be fully educated on issues, that doesn't mean we say the will NEVER be educated. Change takes time. Striving for the ideal is admirable, but not remotely practical. Patience is the key.