Is this thing on?

Addressing the long lapse between blog posts would make sense if this had been created for something other than a class originally. Since it wasn't and I have exactly 2 people from China who have looked at this since 2011 (Hey guys!), I'm not going to and just going to dive in.

I would like to believe that we have the ability to be impartial. I would like to, but I am much too terrible at not crying at the end of A Walk To Remember to ever distance myself enough from a situation to make me impartial.

I set up my two best friends on campus at the beginning of the year. Why I thought this was a good idea is beyond me. But I was dumb (I was only 19 at the time, I can't be held responsible for my actions), and decided the idea of being able to enjoy time with both of them and getting them to have their first relationships with great people was a Win Win Win situation. At the beginning, my friend and sorority pledge mom (the lady in this relationship, let's call her… Cassie), was hesitant. She thought my friend (let's call him… Ralph) was perfect. Sweet, caring, the whole 9 yards, I thought I had won.

Slowly, she started complaining that Ralph wasn't romantic enough, not trying hard enough in the relationship. I listened, like any good Little would, knowing I could never tell Ralph. A few complaints here and there never hurt a relationship, so I moved past it.

A month later, Cassie put a timetable on the relationship. It was not to last past graduation. She was having more issues with Ralph, he wasn't driven enough for her, he wasn't outgoing enough. In the 2 years I have known Ralph, he had never gone out more than this year. He was social and it was a crazy turn around. This, however, wasn't enough for Cassie, but she wasn't going to tell Ralph anything about it.

Confrontation is scary for some.

I had to keep more and more from Ralph. Car rides home, balcony sits, Mario Party nights, were all now that much more stressful.

I had to pretend the relationship he thought was perfect, was falling apart right under his nose.

Cassie finally put the axe to the relationship after Ralph's fraternity formal (excellent timing…). He was blindsided. He was hurt worse than I've ever seen someone. She had spent 15 minutes with him and left, he still doesn't understand why. And here we are. 4 days later, and I'm confused. Cassie says she's heartbroken, that she is having just as hard of a time as Ralph, but I can't feel for her.

Not a single shred of empathy.

So I guess I wrote this because I have one question. Just one thing on my mind.

Am I a bad person?

I don't think I want an answer, I just want to send this cosmic question out into the black hole that is the internet, hoping it makes things... different.

Endings and Beginnings

I am in the midst of watching one of the most moving documentaries I have ever seen. It is called Dear Jack and it is about my hero Andrew McMahon. He is the lead singer of both Jack's Mannequin and Something corporate and is one of the most incredible people I have ever met. In 2005 he was diagnosed with adult leukemia and survived when it seemed there was no chance he could. In the movie he talks about the ending of his relationship with his long time girlfriend before he was diagnosed and how when he got sick, they found each other again and it was like the beginning of something new. I feel like that a lot this week as we transition out of being juniors and take our first steps into senior year and getting closer and closer to becoming adults. Through out the year we've been talking about how things start and finish, how seasons reflect a comedy or a tragedy in stories, and how one ending in history opens another new beginning. So I guess with this being my last graded blog post, the end of my junior year, and the start of senior year, I should reflect on all that I've done (not like its an assignment or anything haha)

The blog post I'm most proud of this quarter is And the shot heard round the world was the start of the revolution. Although it may not have been my most well crafted blog post, it is one of my favorites from the whole year. It was the biggest mind-f moments ever to meet the people who wrote a letter that we studied in class. Both the women were so amazing and explained their points so well I really understood why they did what they did in writing that letter. And I think that me going through this moment was really what I wanted to get out of AS this year. I wanted to be able to learn from different points of view and see where my true ideals lie. Obviously, one class can't do all of that for me but finding out things about literature and life that I have never known opened my eyes to a new part of the world. There is always room for improvement and I think I could really go into more depth in some of my blog posts but I think my overall comfort and ability to successfully use this medium to share my thoughts has improved greatly since the beginning of the year when I just wrote paragraphs and pretended that each post was a mini-essay.

That's really all I have to say, but its been a great ride.

What does the future hold?

With all this year ending stuff, I have suffered from a tiny bit of almost-being-a-senior-itis so I have been checking the RSS feeds I have in my email a lot to distract me from all the things I need to write (like my junior theme rewrite and preparing for my final lol) and I found a link from my favorite audio engineer and it was a video of him talking about the process of sorting through a bunch of different signals in the studio and I loved it. And then I realized what all this work was for, for me to accomplish my goal of being Chris Holmes. Maybe its a vicious cycle of hard work for more hard work but I can't wait to find joy in a career that makes the work I'm dreading worth it. Kind of a babble post, my bad

Here's the video if anyone was curious!

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=219956664695094&oid=172859467408&comments&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=twitterfeed

Each one a perfect porcelain doll

I was babysitting my sister on saturday night and like every time I babysit her, we ordered pizza, got ice cream, and rented movies. My sister chose the 7th harry potter and I picked Mulan. Mulan is one of my favorite movies of all time, but I haven't seen it in a very long time because we don't have the DVD of it. Anywho, for those who don't know, Mulan is a Disney movie whose main character is a brave young woman in China during the Ming dynasty. She takes her fathers place in the army and pretends to be a boy and wins the war against the invading huns for China (pretty much the story of Deborah Sampson in China). Although I remembered how much Mulan kicked but in the movie, I had never paid attention to why she really had to in the first place.

Throughout the movie each character, except for Mulan, keeps saying how women need to be "Kept in their place" and need to be "obedient" to their husbands. This reminded me of the discussions we've been having about how class affects your social standing. In this movie, women are 2nd class citizens and aren't expected to do anything except pour tea and make food and children. It really impressed me that a company like Disney highlighted this fact and counteracted it by having an incredibly strong female protagonist. I was very impressed and watching this movie with more critical eyes made me enjoy it even more.

Hey your part of it, talking about the iGeneration

This doesn't have much to do with what we are currently talking about in class but it has a lot to do with everything we've been talking about all year so I'm gonna blog about it :)

So my favorite rapper, and maybe one of my favorite current artists is MC Lars, an indie hip-hopper who graduated from Stanford and is supremely nerdy in the coolest possible way. Since I adore him and his work, I follow him on twitter through an RSS feed on my email (which are super sweet btw) and his post from today was "I was on CNN today talking about indie rap". I FREAKED OUT and immediately went to the CNN link he gave and watched intently to the guy I've heard speak a zillion times on a huge network (I was so proud haha) which I conveniently have posted right down here!





He was being interviewed about his thoughts on piracy and how he got his start in the music business. He pretty much said that he supports piracy because it means kids will come to his shows and support his music.But the most interesting part of this interview to me was what he said about social media. According to him, without social media, he doesn't think he would have become anything. I think that even though Lars is an insanely wicked rapper, I kind of agree. I think that facebook and limewire and online forums and podcasts have helped launch the careers of so many artists that wouldn't have been heard of otherwise. Not many people want to hear raps about Edgar Allan Poe on the radio, even though they're sweet. Its very interesting how many lives can be changed just by the click of the mouse.

Dirty deeds and they're done dirt cheap

We've been talking a lot about social class in the past few weeks and the fact people are apprehensive about saying they're upper class or lower class. In our class discussion an idea came into my head. Why are extremely rich people called "filthy" rich and extremely poor people are called "dirt" poor, but middle class people aren't referred to as anything "dirty". There's no "muddy" middle class and I was thinking, well... Why? So I did some google-ing on the origins of the phrase "filthy rich" and here's what I got.

This was first used as a noun phrase meaning "rich people; who have become so by dishonourable means" It has become to mean "extremely rich" rather than "dishonourably rich", although there may still be a trace of an unfavourable implication associated with it.

And as I continued my google-ing I couldn't find a solid definition of "dirt poor" but some of the guesses were that people who were "dirt poor" actually had to sleep on dirt floors because they couldn't afford a bed. I think this shows how the middle class is still idolized in America because it isn't partnered with any name that is unclean. Why is this?

And found that we each had something to say

The past 24 hours have been a complete whirlwind for me. My dad woke me up late last night and told me to turn on the T.V. and wouldn't tell me what was up. So I turned my TV to NBC news and saw one of the most shocking headlines I had ever seen.

OSAMA BIN LADEN DEAD

I was stunned to stay the least. I still remember being a little wide-eyed second grader when the Trade Centers fell and not really understanding that a group of people could hate Americans so much. Now, this man that stood for all of that is gone. So why am I still a little uneasy? We talked in class today about this fear a lot of us have about retaliation. It is a scary to think that another attack could happen after the man behind it all is gone. I just pray that this can mark the end of this chapter in American history and we can begin to make peace.