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.

Happiness is two kinds of ice cream, finding your skate key.. and being filthy rich?

 We talked about markers of class all week and one of the big markers that kept coming up was wealth. And what people kept saying was that it is easier for the upper class, but I don't think that necessarily makes the upper class happier. According to Anna Melio, more girls from upper class backgrounds suffer from eating disorders than those from lower class backgrounds. Also, depression and anxiety problems are higher in those in the upper class than lower class.

I find this both surprising and unsurprising.

I find it surprising because lower class families have more struggles financially, which definitely causes stress and can cause depression, while upper class families do not have to worry about that quite as much. On the other hand, upper class families can feel an insane pressure to be the best which can adversely affect their children's and their own mental health.

How does our social status affect our mental health?