Hello, here's a short piece I recently wrote...

Here's another 1000 + word essay I wrote for no particular reason... 

Do you enjoy the thrill of going to the movie theatre? Do you like the anything is possible atmosphere, the multicolored carpeting donning the movie reels of the past, the scent of high calorie imitation butter and popcorn, the potentially bed bug laden seats?  If you’re like me, you love going to the movies. I like the adventure of going to the movies. That’s what film is all about isn’t it – taking the audience somewhere new, like Hogwarts in the Harry Potter series or Middle Earth in The Lord of The Rings Trilogy. But movies aren’t just made to purely entertain an audience. Recently, it seems that more and more Hollywood celebrities are becoming the faces of causes and issues. Remember when Will Ferrell created that ludicrous, yet comical, YouTube video of himself in a robe, sitting in front of that fireplace, begging for us eighteen or older to vote to re-elect Obama, and even jokingly offering to buy Obama voters pizza? Wherever I look, I seem to find a celebrity endorsing a product, a person or a cause. Take a look at all the weight loss commercials for Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Nutrisystem – all of them are using celebrity endorsements.

We know what these political puppets are doing. They are trying to entice the viewer to partake in whatever they are selling. You may recall a negative campaign video (negative campaign videos are in fact more effective than positive campaign videos, both parties just don’t want to admit to it) that President George W. Bush used against Al Gore during the election. A screen shot of the word “rats” was inserted into the sequence of images the audience viewed. This is what you might call subliminal imagery. Subliminal imagery leaves a lasting impression with viewers, without them knowing it, hence subliminal, and it’s completely legal. In fact, when you are sitting in the movie theatre watching the trailers of upcoming films, an image so quick that we don’t really see it, say an image of a large soda, may flash on the screen for mere fractions of a second, and in turn, causes you to experience thirst. And inevitably you’ll end up running to the concession stand for a twenty-dollar soda (price gouging at the theatre is another story and I won’t go off on that tangent now) before the film begins.

This ‘brain washing’ technique got me thinking just a tad bit more than I usually do about film. A new film, Promised Land, is out. Promised Land stars Matt Damon, Francis McDormand and John Krasinski. The film is about a salesman working for a natural gas company. Apparently, the company Damon’s character works for wants to frack for natural gas and there ends up being a bunch of hoopla about it. According to IMDB, Matt Damon, as Steve Butler, “experiences life-changing events”. First of all, lets analyze this - take Damon’s character name. Steve Butler. It’s a nice, simple, average-joe kind of name. But, let’s look at his last name. Butler. That’s right - it’s a not-so-secret secret message. I guess the character is like a butler, a man that is about to do some sort of dirty work for another person, and this person just happens to be a corporation (and remember a corporation is a symbol for capitalism, the free market, an entity which some people despise). Take a look at the title of the film. Promised Land. If you don’t see the overt covert message in that, well then, I don’t know what to tell you.

So you thought you were just going to see a movie for entertainment, for enjoyment, from a break from reality, right? Wrong. Like anything, those commercials about losing twenty pounds for twenty dollars, Damon and his crew are trying to sell you something. This film is political statement. And the message that they want to instill is that fracking is bad and so is capitalism. Fracking is a method for extracting natural gas and oil. Fracking is something that we could do, on American soil, to produce useable energy. Fracking, along with wind, solar and nuclear power, would help us become energy independent, meaning we wouldn’t have to purchase oil from people who completely loathe and despise us and what we stand for. Energy independence is a good thing, but some politicians, what Bill O’Reilly calls leftist loonies, and oddly enough, actors, who know next to nothing about producing energy, engineering energy, or really politics, don’t like fracking. So the people that fight for energy independence really don’t want energy independence. 

Think of all the films you can, and analyze them for yourself. For laughs, take a look at An Inconvenient Truth, which is a complete and utter fantastical lie. The center of Earth is most certainly not millions of degrees hot. And that graphical representation that Gore needs a ladder for (who made that for him in the first place??), is also a complete farce. Talk about a political puppet, it’s no wonder why his wife left him.

Another recent, yet well-crafted piece of cinematic art is the film Lincoln, with Daniel Day-Lewis, directed by Steven Spielberg. It is a prodigious film, I must admit, and it is a wonderful representation of politics at it’s worst, or best, depending on how you look at how the practice of politics interferes with policymaking. Truthfully, it looks to me like nothing in Washington D.C. has really changed in the last hundred and forty plus years. Today we still have policies being pushed through, to which “we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it” as Nancy Pelosi says regarding the then 2010 bill deemed Obamacare, votes being bought and politicians flip-flopping from one side to the other.

Would you define yourself as a critical thinker? Do you see yourself as an independent thinker? Are you aware of the messages sent from Capital Hill, from celebrities, from television, publications and other sources of entertainment and media? Have you even thought about this very subject? What do you think about what I have presented here before you?

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READ It...Or else...I can't do anything so...yeah...just read it

Here's an original 1000 word plus essay I wrote for you to read -- If no one comments, I will assume it's because no one cares and people think that this whole gun/mental health issue is a government conspiracy theory...

I went to a local sport and hunting store, went to the guns section and was shocked to see the cases practically empty. The phones were ringing off the hook and it was pure pandemonium.  I saw first hand how out of control this gun control issue has gotten - people are absolutely terrified that their second amendment rights are going to go ‘poof.’ And I can’t help but thinking that the President and Vice President doing the wrong things, threatening to limit our second amendment, rather than taking appropriate action. This issue, like all controversial issues do, made it to Hollywood. Remember those trailers for Gangster Squad? Well, because of the Aurora, Colorado shooting, producers decided to delete a scene, apparently one that was creepily reminiscent of what happened, and reshot a new scene, not to mention they postponed the release of the film. My issue with this is that film is art. And this is censoring, and I don’t believe it’s right to censor artistic expression.

But now let’s go back to my argument; what would President Obama and Vice President smiley-face love more than taking away assault weapons? Taking away guns from ordinary people that is. Why so much focus on the guns issue when the core issue is mysteriously fading from the media spotlight? I think the media and government have swept the central issue under the rug; the mental health crisis in the United States. Gun control is now being called gun safety, as Michelle Malkin says on Fox and Friends, because gun safety denotes a less radical, less intrusive way of limiting a constitutional freedom.

 It’s not the guns that kill people, it’s people that kill people. Can there be another anecdote that brings out the absolute worst in people? I think not. Sandy Hook was an incredible tragedy, but you can’t let the spin from media on the web, television, newspapers, college professors or the government mask the truth. Most people that own handguns are ordinary, law abiding citizens, who use guns as protection, not to destroy human life. I do recognize the difference between assault weapons and personal handguns. I am not certain that the best thing to do to prohibit the use of assault weapons by civilians. But I know one thing, if our second amendment rights are fringed upon, the south may just succeed after all. Seriously. I go to Georgia Tech and cannot tell you how frustrating it is to receive a clery act for armed robbery in the my morning email. There aren’t nearly enough Georgia Tech police and concealed carry, in my opinion, on college campuses needs to happen.

But, on a more important note, I have a concern with Vice President Joe Biden, with his Cheshire cat (no offense Chesh) smile, with claims to do “something” about gun control…I mean safety. Biden wants President Obama to perform an executive action to do “something.” But Biden’s objective is not only to do something about assault weapons; I fear something drastic, with the second amendment.

It’s not the ordinary people with handguns that kill the majority of people dying from gun related crimes. It’s the criminals that are responsible for the majority of gun related deaths and criminals don’t care about any type of executive action taken – criminals will buy and sell and carry weapons no matter what; that is one reason why they are criminals - the law has no effect on their behavior. I can’t help putting some of the blame on society for the perpetrator’s of the crimes at the Aurora movie theatre, Columbine, Sandy Hook and Virginia Tech. In each instance, the gun-wielding male was mentally ill. How can society not notice these individuals, these individuals who are withdrawn from society, who don’t interact with their fellow man, who seem awkward, who claim that they will hurt people and animals or do something through social media outlets? You can’t not notice, you cannot be so blind, you can only ignore.

Since I’m blaming society, I might as well just go full force and blame the families of these individuals at fault as well. They should be held accountable. They should have said something, done something. If your child kills animals out in the backyard for fun, you know you have a problem. If your child is disruptive at home and school, you know you have a problem. If your child is defiant, impulsive and has committed criminal acts, you definitely know you have a problem. I can’t see nor believe that parents, family members, teachers and other community members didn’t notice or couldn’t tell that something was wrong (that’s just a bunch of b.s. and denial). This could be the most infuriating part of these occurrences – the complete blindness and refusal to take action on part of the closest to the gun-wielding psychopath.

It’s happened, but what can we really do now to prevent it from happening again? VP Biden blames video games. It’s not the video games – I play all kinds of video games, from Viva Piñata to Gears of War – and I’m just fine (but I didn’t sit in front of my Nintendo 64 when I was eight years old for eight to ten hours a day). I do know that studies have shown video game violence transfers to the real world. But then you could say video games are prepping the young to become soldiers. I guess, video games are to the Third Reich as the associated violence with video games is to the Nazi Youth. So ban mature rated video games to adults eighteen or older. But will that work? I seriously doubt it. Mature rated video games will be like alcohol and underage kids – they will figure out a way to get them anyway. This plausible solution isn’t the right or only solution to the problem, because video games aren’t the true cause.

It’s a mental health crisis.  I may be going out on a limb here, but let’s take solutions to the extreme. Psychopaths (also known as sociopaths unless you’re going to scrutinize the differences down to tiny attributes) have noticeable brain abnormalities; ventricles in the brains of psychopaths are enlarged. Maybe from birth, we can give every newborn a CT scan to look for brain abnormalities. It could be possible that the medical community could identify psychopaths even before they take their first steps. But what would we do with these ‘invalids’ (yes I’m borrowing this word from Gattaca, because it helps make my point). We would have to exterminate them, how about that for anti-human rights, or lock them up in children’s prisons (but little kids grow up, right?) We could start up gladiator teams, with little kids on each, and use them for really disturbing entertainment. Or we could use them for cosmetic testing (free the animals!).

What do you do with psychopaths? Currently, we just ‘lock em up’. Medications don’t help unless they are psychotic. Lobotomies could work, right? Yeah, I vote for lobotomies. There’s nothing more gratifying than turning a cold-blooded killer into a complete vegetable. Setting aside the satire, really what can we do? 

How much is my education worth?

The new semester and recent articles in newspaper publications have me thinking about the cost of a four year college education and the true value of it. Some people would say that I am lucky to receive the HOPE scholarship – a scholarship based on merit, not financial need. But I worked for the scholarship. I was an A/B student, mostly A’s, in high school, and I maintained my high performance in college from the beginning. I have a 3.80 GPA and “am lucky enough” to have 100% of Georgia Tech tuition paid for. In-state tuition, the amount HOPE pays for, is under five thousand dollars a semester.

A roommate from last semester is an out-of-state student. Her parents, as she said it, shell out forty grand a year for her to attend Georgia Tech. I knew the tuition for out-of-state students was high, but I hadn’t thought of myself, or my parents, paying that much for my education, especially for an undergraduate degree. I was wondering if my roommate thought that she was receiving forty thousand dollars worth of education. But then again, how can you measure the worth of an education. It can’t be based on where undergrads go to graduate school or how much money they make at their first job because these are not guarantees. Georgia Tech cannot guarantee me admittance to Columbia or NYU, nor a job.

It really infuriates me that ‘the rising cost of tuition’ can be attributed, partly, to colleges and universities ‘hiring more administrative staff’. First of all, some of the administrative staff is useless; fewer employees are needed to actually to get the job done. Secondly, if I have a question, I receive an automated response or a response by a student employee. 

I honestly cannot say whether I have or currently am receiving a forty thousand dollar a year education. I find it difficult to give my education a price tag. I don’t know what the true monetary value of the quality of my, or for anyone else’s for that matter, education is. Realtors ask, “How much is this property worth?” Well, the answer is “what someone is willing to pay for it.” If colleges had open seats, and had a pool of applicants that were ‘pre-approved’ and then would be allowed to bid on how much they would pay for that spot, then, and only then would we know how much an education would be worth.

I am in my junior year of college and so, naturally, I am preparing for the future. This means deciding on what to do for graduate school, because let’s be honest, you can’t afford to not make money and I don't want to struggle to live how I want. I’ve come to the decision that law school is what is at the top of my short, short list – that is if I can get into one of the top ten law schools in the US (and I greatly prefer Columbia University or NYU and I do not want to go to a school in California so Stanford is out of the running). If I can’t get into one of the best, I am not sure it would be in my best interest, or in the interest of my parent’s bank account, to go to a lesser school for a J.D. It’s too bad that apprenticeships in the field of law just don’t happen too much anymore (will firms want you if you do an apprenticeship?) because we all hear that it’s experience that facilitates learning. I like the idea that I would take the LSAT’s, apply to law school and then, I would go shopping around for a sponsor, a law firm, that would pay a percentage of my law school tuition (some or all of it) guaranteed if I commit to working for them when I graduate for a period of time. This way I would be guaranteed the funds to make it through law school with little to no debt, and a job (that's unheard of...just kidding)! Anyone out there want to be my sponsor? Yes? 

The Cost of Freedom...It's Sarcasm People

Government bans light bulbs and government bans plasticwater bottles in Concord, Massachusetts. Government bans extra large sodas,unpasteurized milk and foie gras. People ban books and limit the number of catsyou can have in Wellington, Kansas. We might as well ban all sugary drinksincluding, but not limited to: fruit juices, regular sodas of all flavors,coffee creamers, milks, and teas. Fast food should be eliminated because it’sfull of fat, sugar and salt and makes us fat. Chocolate is evil because it’sfull of sugar. Cheese shouldn’t be produced because it makes people obese. Infact, depending on what kinds of medication one is on, one should not beallowed to eat foods that correspond to contributing to the health issues, i.e.if you are on high blood pressure medications, you shouldn’t be allowed to eat anythingwith salt.  All processed foods should beeliminated from the diet because it causes obesity.

Just as most types of food aren’t healthy, other behaviorsaren’t healthy. Condoms and birth control should be banned because it promotespre-marital sex and when the technology doesn’t work, it causes abortion.Abortion should be banned because it’s murder and it was sinful to do you knowwhat when it should only be legal to do it for reproductive purposes. Alcoholshould be banned because it makes people stupid and it’s poison. Cows andchickens and fish shouldn’t be farmed as food, they’re friends. Cell phones andcomputers should be banned because they keep us sedentary and make us fat.

Plastic surgery should be banned if it’s being used forreasons other than reconstruction. Breast augmentations, rhinoplasties,face-lifts and botox injections are dangerous and unnecessary. Cosmetics shouldbe totally eliminated because they are made of chemicals. Leather clothing,accessories and furniture should stop being produced because that’s animalcruelty. Cars should be outlawed because they are weapons of mass destructionand cause pollution. Hand dryers in restrooms should be banned because theyactually blow the bacteria onto your hands and can cause illness. The using ofhand sanitizers should be made illegal because it’s really unhygienic andpromote resistant bacteria. The hem of women’s and men’s shorts should be noshorter than three inches away from the top of the knee cap to eliminate anindividuals bodily fluids from escaping their body and contaminating chairs,exercise equipment, benches, seats on buses, planes and trains.

Old people smell and it’s unhealthy and distressing foryounger people to see older people become decrepit; therefore the elderlyshould be banned and properly disposed of. Flowers should not be sold as indoordecorative pieces because they can carry bugs. Aluminum should be bannedbecause it is known to cause Alzheimer’s if consumed. Socks should be sold inmultiples of three because, inevitably, one always gets lost. These itemsshould be banned as well: magazines, tablets, vitamins, x-rays, dentalcleanings, swimming (deadly amoebas), airplanes, museums, movies and freespeech because it can be hurtful.

Doesn’t it seem that our freedom is becoming less free? Are we really that inept that we need an institution to make our own decisions forus? Are we so stupid that we don’t know what is best for ourselves? I think Jonathan Swift had a brilliant idea – we should farm infants for food. And Iknow just the place – Russia. They have thousands of orphaned, invalid childrenplumping up. We could harvest them, chop them up, package them in recycledmaterials and ship them over to Africa where we can hand out a freeze-driedpackage of Russian orphan to every polio vaccine recipient. We can solve worldhunger and eliminate a disabling illness all at once.