Juicy Claims

1. Horror movies don't create murderers, although they do fill the thrill humans need to fill their craziness..

2. Watching scary horror films can fill the 'bad' inside all of us, but that doesnt mean we are gong to go out and murder someone when we're out of moves to watch.

3.We are all crazy, we have weird habbits everyday and are always creating new ones, but, we're not all crazy enough to murder like they do in the horror films we all love.

"Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

                    So far I have only read the first four pages, the first one ‘eh’, the second and third intriguing and the fourth, well boring. I do agree with Carr that “research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be in minutes”. The internet has changed a lot in many ways. I can admit that in middle and high school, instead of reading a book, I would use sparknotes.com and figure out key points, just enough to pass my quizzes and exams. I also happen to know most of my class did the same. It’s sad that now even authors don’t like to read, everything is a minute away when you have the internet. The fourth page, seemed like the longest, I feel like they begin to use big words and long quotes, I’m tempted myself to just look on Google for an outline of the paper, though I won’t. Now in school, kids aren’t learning how to read books, they are learning how to use a computer for the internet. Like it says in the article, reading is not programmed into our brains like speaking is, we have to be taught to read, but when everything we could ever want to know is in a 15” by 9” computer that only weighs 5 pounds, why carry around endless amounts of books, not only are they boring, they are heavy and actually using your brain Is part of books, you can’t just get the theme and key points in a small paragraph like you can on Google. I have found myself on Google at least five times while reading this article, and looked at the many links the article offers, maybe if I were programmed differently and worked more like ‘clock-work’ rather than ‘computer-work’ I wouldn’t have to look up the words I don’t understand, I would just know them, and not have to look up the information he refers to, but that is the way my brain is programmed, and its only getting worse for the younger generations.

The Serenity to Change the Things I Can

The Serenity to Change the Things I Can is by Mark Olmsted. Mark believes in picking up trash. Mark in his youth was a buyer and seller of crystal meth and now sees the impact the chemicals a meth lab can have on the world. Since he was put in prison for nine months his views on recycling have changed drastically. Since he did the earth harm by being a user of meth and supporting meth labs, Mark is trying to make up for it by picking up trash in his neighborhood to help the environment. Mark for over 5 years now had picked up four bags of trash each morning on the route he walks his dog. Olmsted uses this as a relaxation method, if he’s having a bad day he goes out in the afternoons as well as the morning and fills bags with trash and litter. Mark is trying to help us realize that you can change the world, even if only a little. It still makes a difference. Mark “believes in picking up trash because it’s taught me that you can’t assume to know the difference between the things you must accept and the things that you can change---you have to think about it". I think if we were more aware, like mark is, we could all change the world and make it a better place. As well as be happier with our selves, when you do something good and you know it, I think you feel better.

Facebook in a Crowd

Facebook in a crowd is about Hal Neidzviecki who had lost touch of his real social life, except for on social web-sites like facebook where he had over 700 "friends", he decided to do an 'experiment' and made a facebook invite to meet him. Neidzviecki had 15+ say they were coming and 60+ that said they were maybe coming. Only one person showed up the night of his party.

This article shows me that social networking is taking away actually interacting with people, instead of a phone call we can message on facebook or text, instead of actually meeting people we can Skype. Although facebook is a good way to keep in touch with old friends, when you use it as your only way of communication (besides texting), it can cause problems, like loneliness and boredom. Neidzviecki made that very mistake, and when it came down to actually interacting with people, one person decided to go, out of the 700+ invites he sent out. I think people would rather not deal with each other, why put the energy into getting ready to go somewhere when you could just sit at home on your computer. It’s understandable why people are so attached to facebook, America is lazy and that’s just one more way to ‘make life easier’, though in the long run it’s making it worse.

BLOG 4

'Why We Crave Horror Movies' is by Stephen King who thinks that we are all insane, because people like horror movies. I would have to disagree with this article, though I do understand why he thinks we are all crazy, but instead of crazy, we are just human. Humans are crazy. We do weird things that are questionable every day, maybe even a few times a day. King says “We’ve all known people who talk to themselves, people who sometimes squinch their faces together when they believe no one is watching, people who have some hysterical fear, of snakes…” That’s not being insane in my opinion that’s being normal. We all have fears. I personally am deathly afraid of spiders, am I insane? Do I belong in an asylum? King says we are “daring the nightmare” that I believe is human nature, we all want something crazy to happen all the time, we crave adrenalin. If everyone was nice and perfect all the time, we would get bored.  An example of this is the way he compares a horror movie to a roller coaster and “the way we scream when a roller coaster twists through a complete 360, that’s the crave for adrenaline, not insanity. Without that crave, we wouldn’t be human. Personally I am not a fan of horror movies, I don’t like the gore of it all, I still crave adrenaline rush of a surprise, I just don’t like it in the form of blood and guts. I think Stephen King belongs in an insane asylum, if he gets that joy and appeal from watching horror movies in more of a way than just watching it for entertainment. When he talks about little kids being treated well for behaving well, and hugging his rotten puke little sister so he can be rewarded with the happiness of his parents is a good thing, not bad like he’s making it sound. If all of our parents promoted violence and murder, there would be no one left. Teaching kids good is keeping them out of the insane asylum. As far as the dead baby joke told by the ten year old boy, hes a ten year old boy! What can you expect, when you’re young, it’s cool to say bad or dirty jokes. That’s human nature. I don’t believe horror movies are mean to “deliberately appeal to all that is worst in us”, its just a simple form of entertainment that meets our craving for an adrenaline rush.

BLOG 3

Shitty First Drafts. BLOG 2

"The fantasy of the uninitiated" is describing people who are not writers and think that writers have it easy and can sit down, first try, and create a perfect story their first draft. Anne Lamott is saying that, that is not true. All writers write first, second, and third drafts and though the finished book or story is perfect it took them a few times to get it right. Everyone writes shitty first drafts, it’s how you better your story to become something great.

Lamott says that she eventually let herself trust the process, more or less. The more or less is meaning that she lets herself go with her writing, that she always writes too much, maybe it’s a bad thing, but that way she can go through and erase and correct and limit all of what she has already written and make it better and better. She had to trust herself in that she needed to stop worrying about it being perfect and just let her fingers do the typing. I think that this not only applies to her but that it applies to most writers. I’m sure most writer’s, get anxiety about writing a good review or a good book and tend to over think the process of writing when she lets herself go but isn’t writing about nothing, she’s getting a good story with honest opinions.

I think writing the first, shitty draft is about the product and the process, the process is obviously very important in that the process is what it takes to write it and that means that writing a shitty first is benefiting the product of the whole thing. But overall I would say the process is more important because a good long process leads to a great product. I do agree with this for my first drafts, my first drafts almost always suck, but it takes those shitty first drafts to improve the story and make it better and better.