I love falin

Come on January 20th. Man am I glad McSame Failin did not win. When I read the Palin: wrong woman, wrong message story, it became clear just how bad she was for America. Now before any resentful republicans send me hate mail lent me just say this. I think john McCain is a good guy and would have made in any other year, where the stakes were not so high, a decent president. That is saying a lot from me. But choosing Palin as his running was the worst decision of his campaign. Palin, in my opinion, makes all women look bad. She is basically Bush with a Bush. She does not know very much about the issues nor does she care. Throughout the campaign she just focused on an old republican strategy. Calling your opponent a liberal like it was a bad word. All I remember her saying is that Obama's a socialist, he wants to distribute the wealth. He will tax you to death and he might be a terrorist because he served on a board with one. This, by the way is like Rush Limbaugh calling John McCain a liberal because he served in the Senate with democrats. Palin's use of old republican attack strategies made it seem like she knew nothing about the issues. She just took and continues to take every opertunity she had to make herself out to be a red neck. It scared me because, if John McCain were to dye and he could, he has almost reached the average life expectancy, then America would have a president that could not be taken seriously, kind of like bush today. And today with so much wrong in this country we need a president that is smart, not someone that goes to a witch doctor

*Yes, I know that last point is not fare but she is still an idiot.

Sarah Palin [Sarah Palin]. Digital image. Extreme Mortman. 30 Aug. 2008. Extreme Mortman. 11 Dec. 2008 .

Ps. sorry for the fugly font i don't know how to fix it.

-l-><-I- speak

<rant>

A couple things went through my head when reading the article on text speak. I am a person that hates text speech. And I think you should be professional when you write an employer. Going 4 years through collage just to talk to your employer as if you are a ten-year-old teenybopper is a waste of an education. I wish the abbreviated term for laugh out loud ( I refuse to write it) would die a slow and miserable death. I hate how I cannot tell whether or not someone is taking the lords name in vain or just saying gosh when they write omg. In addition, I hate how people want to text me a thousand messages instead of just calling me. The other day a coworker texted me to try to get me to take the trash out which was something they could have told me in person. I think 99 percent of the text messages sent are useless crap, and often times I end up having to call the person that is texting me, because I cannot tell what the person meant. There is no tone to a text message, so it is hard sometimes to understand whether someone is serious or not. But instead of that person just calling they think it is ok to slap a :) or an :( or something else that does not even look like a face in the message for good measure. Yes text speak is sometimes a pet peeve of mine. Sometimes it is useful but most of the time it makes you unclear. But what I hate more than txt speak is L337 or leet speak. L337 speak is used when someone replaces letters with numbers. Like if, I were to write _/3phph instead of Jeff. L337 speak is not shorter and it is harder to understand. The only reason people write that way is to try to be cool. Let me just say this right now. It is not cool.

</rant>

Damn it.

Gallagher, Fred. Speak L337? [L337-Speak megatoyko]. Digital image. Megatokyo. 1 Sept. 200. Megatoyko. 11 Dec. 2008 .

30 Days…without soda

Watching supersized me in class was a real eye opener for me. I was surprised at just how in depth the documentary was on the obesity epidemic. It showed nearly all the factors that go into obesity in America, such as massive advertisements for junk food, our sedentary lifestyle, the crap we eat both in school and by choice. It made me examine my life and gave me that little extra motivation to be healthy. I found that I rarely, maybe once every couple of months, go to a fast food restaurant. But I found that I was probably addicted to something the documentary criticized, soda. I found that I was drinking a two-liter or more of soda every day. I challenged myself to quit drinking soda cold turkey just to see if I could. It turned out to be easy. Water, pure water, not water I had after drinking soda the same day, tasted excellent. Kicking the soda habit had great health benefits for me. Without the caffeine and aspartame in my system, I noticed that I got better sleep and was more alert the next day. In addition, even though the soda I gave up was diet and had no calories, I still lost weight, 20 pounds so far since I gave up soda two and a half months ago. Finding out just how much soda effected me, I wondered something. If I actually prefer water to soda where I once, despised it, how much of the decision to drink soda was my own? After all, is it not easier to get soda than water? Don't you have to pull that tab down on the soda fountain to get water? Water that tastes like crap because it comes out of the same nozzle the soda comes out of. In addition, the restaurant gave you a kiddy cup because they do not believe that you would actually want their water. I do not think, at least for me, the choice to drink soda was pure free will. To sum up this blog entry I found through personal experience that many of the claims made in Supersize Me were horrifyingly accurate.

Fitzpatrick, Brad. Movie Soda [Big soda cup]. Digital image. Big Gulp | Drawings & Sketches. 5 Nov. 2005. BradFitzPatrick.com. 11 Dec. 2008

My time in English 111

If I am going to remember anything about my English 111 class, it would have to be the first day. I remember walking in on time and waiting for the instructor show up. Looking around the classroom, everyone around me looked tired, grumpy, and anti-social. No one was talking, many people had their head on their desk, and the class was filled with an awkward silence. Soon enough the ice was broken when a strange student asked what everyone was thinking. "Does anybody know how long we have to wait for the instructor to show up?" I think someone said he thought it was ten minutes, but otherwise the class was still somewhat silent. Eventually someone got up and left and at that point that just got out of bed looking student that seemed like he was anxious to jump back in to bed revealed himself to be the teacher. At that point I knew that class was going to be different. I finally had a class that did not have a teacher that could be my grandfather. I remember him introducing himself and telling the class how he was like us, that he himself went to community college and had a rough start. That was something relatable to me because I was a 20 year old in a class with a bunch of seventeen and eighteen-year olds. Having a teacher around my age tell me that they went through a similar situation and made it gave me hope and gave me that extra discipline to do well. This was the second time I took English 111, so I needed all the discipline in the world to get the work done. As the weeks went on in the class, the class became closer and closer. Everyone got to know each other and become friends, something that, I think, is really rare in college. One of the best things I learned in the class actually had nothing to do with English. Watching Supersized Me disgusted me. That movie opened my eyes and made me eat healthier. I actually lost a lot of weight by listening to the movie. I gave up drinking soda and started eating healthier and so far, I lost 20 pounds. One of the funniest times in the class was when we arranged our chairs in a circle and cracked jokes about the different sexes. It was after that class I knew I could say anything in the class, and I did. The rhetorical analysis presentation on Katt Williams could have got me an F or even kicked out of any other class. The video I showed had abrupt racial stereotypes and every other word was an expletive, yet no one was offended and practically everyone loved it. Even though the class was fun, the education I received was excellent too. In other English classes a teacher would have you study text books on grammar and take quizzes on verbs and noun. They would make you study so much that you'd hate being literate. Mr. gasparo class was the only english class I've ever had where I actually enjoyed writing.

original diagnostic essay

Many times in my life, I have wished for various different superpowers. Whenever I am stuck in traffic, I imagine how cool it would be to fly out of the jam. The night before the big project is due, and I am nowhere near ready to turn it in, I pray I had the power to alter time. Every time I injure myself, and the pain just will not go away fast enough, I wish I had super fast healing powers. However, the one superpower I wish I had, when I woke up tomorrow, would have to be mind control.
One of the reasons mind control would be such a cool power to have is its diversity. Many of the things I could accomplish with other powers I could also do with mind control. I would not need to fly out of a traffic jam if I could, with mind control, make every car in front of me move to the side. I would not need to alter time, in order to get the big project in on schedule, if I could just use my mind control powers to force the professor to give me an A.
I could do so many awesome things if I had mind control powers. I would not need a job when, through mind control, I could get anything I could ever want. On the gross side, I would not even have to take a shower if I could make everyone around me think I smell like rainbows and sunshine. There would be no need to act respectful and polite if I could make people think I am Mr. Rogers. Speaking would not be necessary if I could make someone instantly know what I am saying. However, the best thing about having mind control would be attracting girls.



With mind control, I could make any girl I could ever want swoon over me. The girl I had a crush on in high school, that was way out of my league, would be my biggest fan and stalker. Jessica Alba would be all mine. Instead of the stupid Paparazzi harassing us, and shooting our picture anywhere we go, they would harass and shoot each other, to death. I would not have to take my girlfriend to dinner all the time. We would instead, stay home all the time and eat her delicious, homemade, cake and ice cream as well as do other, awesome, things.
After I indulged myself for a little bit, I would try to improve the world with my amazing gift. First I would stop the violence wherever I knew it was happening, instead of people trying to kill their enemy, I would make them buy each other a drink. However, many people of the world are too poor to buy drinks, so I would, like Robin Hood; force the rich to give to the poor. Finally, I would force all the world leaders to make the government fair to their people by forcing them to rise up against corrupt officials.
I think mind control would be an awesomely fun superpower to have. I could probably do more cool stuff with mind control than I could with any other superpower I can imagine. If I could manage not to let the gift go to my head to much, I could do a lot of good for the world. Though superpowers would be fun, there would be a huge responsibility to save the world with them. Because of that, I am glad just to be regular old me. Then again, having a superpower for just one day would not suck.
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