It’s all coming together

Yes, I am completely immersed in classes this semester. Since I went back to school in Spring 2009, this is the first semester where I am doing lot’s of writing. Writing is something that I love to hate.  I love to do it when I have great ideas, but I hate to do it when I don’t have to.  And right now I am really being challenged in my Ethnic History class. Who would’ve thought that the history class would involve so much writing. I was anxious in the beginning because I thought that I was gonna struggle with having to remember so many historical events and dates, but this is a lot worse. However, I love the challenge and I am glad to be dusting off my writing cobwebs. I just told someone that if I make it to the end in this class then I will really know that I have writing chops. Good luck to me!!!

Can’t wait for next weeks movie!!

Whew, I just got through my first week of school. I have a heavy load this time around and tons of work ahead of me. I finished my last class a few hours ago and it was Film Studies 1.  A 1950′s movie called Sunset Blvd and it was hilarious.  Very funny, B&W film noire and with great writing and acting. I was really surprised to like the movie. I had never seen it before and our teacher thought that it would be a great movie to begin our film study career because it has a lot of basic elements that a novice should know. Great discussion afterwards, some likened it to Gone with the Wind and Double Indemnity…neither of which I have seen but heard about nonetheless.  I made it through those 4 hours without going crazy. I look forward to next more movies.

I lost my music

Amazon.com has failed me.

Yes, my computer crashed and yes, I had more than 50 mp3 files of music on my hard drive and yes, I lost it all.  So, I’m really pissed because at an average of $.99 per mp3, I hate to have thrown that money away.  Someone recommended that I try reloading them from Amazon.com (where I purchased most of them). But I can’t. Amazon.com doesn’t allow one to redownload MP3 files that one has purchased. WHAT!!!

Now I ‘m frustrated…at my PC for crashing, at my husband (the computer guy) for not being able to retrieve my lost files, and at Amazon.com for not allowing me to reload music I already purchased from them.  So much for modern technology.    Ughhhhhh…

Thumbs up to a game well shot!

I have to admit that it has been at least 15 years since I have watched the Superbowl.  I am not a fan of  football in general but my husband insisted that we watch it and since we are a one TV family, I relented.  I decided to busy myself with household chores in between “watching” the game.   But  I have to say that I was highly impressed with the bit’s and pieces that I did see.  Not so much with the game, but with the way the game was being shown.   I was really taken aback by the tech improvements  in overhead shots and other angles that made it seem like I was right on the field. They have come a long way from showing the announcers in the both, and 1 or 2 cameramen on the sidelines.  Not to mention watching it in HD was awesome.  I spoke to someone later who told me that there are actually wires set up overhead that the camera’s are mounted on which allows for this type of filming.  Nice!!

Also, the commercials weren’t all that great.  I can’t even tell you which two teams were playing or where they played. But I can tell you that I saw some really great angles and some ok commercials in between.  But I am looking forward to the World Cup Soccer matches coming up this summer.

Fair Game?

This weekend, I saw a documentary on TVOne called Fair Game?. Produced by Mario Van Peebles, it featured a host of Black men in all fields of study, work, including  community workers and leaders. This documentary was moving because it attempted to answer the question, have things really changed much for the Black man since the election of Pres. Obama?

It yielded daunting results specifically in the areas of education, mental health, economics, and others.  According to this documentary, the situation for young Black men has actually gotten worse compared to 10-15 years ago.   The fact is a disproportionate rate of them are stressed out, suicidal, uneducated, incarcerated, and hopeless.  The grim “truth” is,  for the average Black male things are not faring well at all.  Not to mention the disparaging images and stories that are constantly fed to us by the media. Notwithstanding, there have been substantial progress made in the Black community and for African-Americans in the US as a whole. 

Surely, there are exceptions to these findings and those exceptions are as a result of the sheer mental and physical fortitude of those who do well, but also because in some capacity, those who do succeed have the necessary opportunities, support, and mentoring/fathering/authority figures that the others lack. Which brings me to my point which this documentary confirms. All of the necessary opportunities and support systems have to be in place in order for these young people to succeed. Unfortunately, there are various of reasons why these things do not exist, which I won’t get into right now, so this outcome is not surprising.

To view the documentary go to: http://www.tvoneonline.com/shows/show.asp?sid=1081&id=2575

This is way too much!

“We live in a distracted society. Every day we are bombarded with more information than we can process. We are overstimulated through advertising to identify and gratify our wants and needs. The nightly news puts the problems of the whole world in our living room. Our heads spin and over hearts become heavy”  by Ranelda Mack Hunsicker

The above quote is from a book I recently read called Secrets: Unlocking The Mystery of Intimacy with God.  I like this quote because it confirms my belief that too much media can have a negative affect on us. Ever heard of the saying “too much of a good thing is not a good thing?”

I wholeheartedly believe that we are overmedialized.  As  result of this, we are more distracted, impatient, angry, aggressive, and even more confrontational.  With the help of technology, we are repeatedly shown billboard images as we drive the highways and streets of our cities. We are barked at on the radio by DJ’s and musicians who want us to listen to their stations and to buy/download their music,  we are speaking with friends and loved ones all day long by texting, Skyping, and IM’ing. We are watching and touching our handheld screens showing us movies, videogames, YouTube videos, and who knows what else. We, the microwave age population, have everything at our disposal in less than a few seconds which is a good and bad thing. 

The virtues of patience, kindness, tranquility, and basic love for one another is a rarity these days.  And I think that  the overexposure to media we experience daily has alot to do with it. 

This is just way too much for me sometimes and I know that I am probably not alone in this sentiment.  Sometimes I have to step away/walk away/run away from all sources of media and just BE…still…quiet…alone.  Sounds wierd?

Don’t believe the single story!

Someone recently shared this with me and I was so moved by it.  Author and storyteller, Chimamanda Achidie speaks about her discovery of how hearing  a single story about a people has a negative affect on how we understand and view each other. When people are continually depicted in one way it robs humans of their  uniqueness. Rather it categorizes us all as the same when we are all acutally as different as fingerprints.

It is a little long but definitely worth watching.

“When we reject the single story, when we realize that there is no single story about any place we regain a kind of paradise”  -Chimamanda Achidie

Help! My Magazine is Shrinking.

I have a few magazines that I still subscribe to and I starting noticing that they were getting thinner and lighter over the past few years. And not only that, there are more advertisements and fewer stories. 

Obviously the economy has also tremendously affected print media and I get that they are scrambling to cut costs, so it didn’t surprise me when the stock paper started getting thinner and thinner.  But when the stories and articles started diminishing then I have a problem.  My average $29.95 per subscription is money that I can’t afford to waste right now.  Which makes me wonder if now is the  time to finally end my subscription to these magazines.  Am I paying to flip through pages of ads or for the stories?  Advertisting pays for print media to exist, so the answer would be both right?  Besides that, they are sending me daily email messages to subscribe to their online magazines while sending me notices on the front cover of my magazines that I need to renew my subscription.  Thus my dilemma.

Fortunately for them,  I actually still prefer and enjoy reading material that I can hold in my hand and not on a computer, so I don’t think I will cancel my subscriptions. I just want more stories and alot less advertising. Is that asking for too much?

Don’t Text and Drive!

Welcome to planet earth!!! The place where texting and driving is quickly killing more people than drinking and driving (according to Oprah anyway).

I happened to watch the Oprah show on the MLK holiday and her topic for the day was, the dangers of texting while driving. Every now and then I watch Oprah because I like to stay in the loop about the things that are happening in the “Oprahdom”.  And I have to say that I was glad I did.

I learned that according to recent studies:

1. There is a rise in deaths due to texting while driving.
2. Offenders are people of all ages (not just teenagers and young adults as one would imagine).
3. Many states still don’t have any legislation in place to penalize offenders.

Wow, someone like me would rationally figure out that talking on the cell phone, much less texting while driving, is dangerous and crazy. But there  are many people who actually think they can do both and have tragically found out that it can be deadly.   But, really, does someone need to tell us that texting while driving is BAD?

This is the day and age we live in. The advanced  and complex modern devices that we are using daily can be dangerous. But then again, many things we use everyday can harm us.  Either it ‘s killing us quickly  or slowly over time.  We would have to walk around in bubble suits and floating on air in order to avoid all the dangerous and harmful things around us. 

We seriously all need to go back to using that  precious commodity known as COMMON SENSE. It’s priceless…that’s why God gave it to us for free.

So, in the hopes of not instilling more fear in people, I reitierate Madam Oprah’s slogan: Don’t Tempt F8, That Text Can W8.

The few unoticed helpers

I think at this point we are all outraged and losing patience with the not- so- helpful help taking place in post earthquake Haiti.  It is completely outrageous that all the supplies, food, water, and medical help that they need is there on grown (specifically at the airport), but hasn’t reached the people yet . Gen. Colin powell made it a little more clear to me last night on the BBC newscast, all the logisitical planning that has to be place in order to distribute aid fairly and orderly. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/world_news_america/8462872.stm I understand that…but how many days does it that take? It has already been 4 days as I am writing this post. Aren’t these teams down there  trained for these types of situations…but that is not the point of this post. 

I just want to point out that there have been small groups of people who have attempted to give out food and water. They are people or groups that decided not to wait for the big organizations  to come in. They took it upon themselves to help as best they could with what they had. Of course, it didn’t help the masses that are in need, but my point is that we never saw or heard of these few helpers. The mainstream media was only showing images of dead or injured bodies all over the city. But very few ever reported on or showed who these good samaritans are. I just want to say that I acknowledge  these few people who took it upon themselves to help their fellowmen who needed their help. Though the media didn’t tell us who or what they are…I noticed them and want to say thank you!!