Violence in Video Games!

I've been playing video games since I was little; my brother was the one who got me into playing. At first we just played racing games and Tony Hawk: Pro Skater on my PlayStation One. Today, we both have our own PlayStation Three's, and every once in a while we play Call of Duty together online. A lot of people say video games are a waste of time and that violent video games turn you into a violent person. I don't think they are a waste of time unless all one does is play video games all day up to the point where your addiction for playing gets in the way of other things. Video games can be positive though. They can teach people hand-eye coordination, rapid thinking skills, and problem solving skills. It all depends on what type of games one is playing. I also think the statement "violent video games make people violent" depends on the age, maturity level, and brain capacity of the player. If the person playing a violent video game is young, around twelve and below, then they probably should not be playing that game in the first place. On the other hand, someone can be older than that but not have the mental capacity to discern the game from real life, therefore acting out in the real world what they see in the game. I started playing Call of Duty when I was around eight years old. That's a pretty young age to be playing a first-person shooter. My mom protested against me playing that game for a long time before my older brother convinced her to let me play it, but once she finally let me, she only let me play in short increments with my older brother, and she constantly reminded me that the game was not real life. I play Call of Duty every now and then these days, but I would never go out in the real world and shoot someone because I saw it in a video game. In conclusion, I believe that parents should assess their child before letting them play violent games. 

One of the most popular violent games ever is probably call of duty lol 

Skateboarding!

I've had an infatuation of skateboarding since I was little. When I got my Playstation One, one of the first games my parents bought for me was Tony Hawk: Pro Skater 3. At around five years old, my parents bought me a skateboard (it wasn't a real one, but I was five so it didn't matter. I was just happy to have one lol). Ever since then, I've gotten kinda good at skateboarding. The best trick I can do is a varial heelflip, which is pretty sweet. I was really excited when I first landed it haha. I haven't skated much since summer time, mainly because I don't have any friends to skate with. Without anyone to skate with, I get bored pretty quickly. Also, having people around motivates me to try new tricks, especially if they are trying it themselves. Hopefully I find some friends who I can skate with sometime. Until then, I'll be cruising by myself...

really old pic of me skateboarding lol i haven't taken any others in a long time

How I Chose To Go To RMHS

I hadn't planned to go to RMHS at first... it was a last minute decision by my parents. In middle school, my parents wanted me to go to Santa Clara High School, mainly because my older siblings went there when they were my age. Of course I was opposed to this, since I had gone to a private school from first through eighth grade. I was mostly tired of having to wear uniforms everyday which kept me from expressing my self through clothing. What's the point of having nice clothes if you can't wear them five days out of the week, right? After a while, I felt as if their decision would not change so I became accustomed to the thought of going to a private school for another four years of my life. It wasn't until towards the end of the eighth grade that I started wanting to go to a public high school again. I started trying to convince my mom that a public school would be better for me. I told her that there would be less bills to pay every month, and I got my sister to convince her to look up info about public high schools in the district and see how they stack up compared to Santa Clara HS. Eventually, she changed her mind and decided to sign me up for a public high school. We decided that I will go to Oxnard High School. Unfortunately, we figured out too late that we had to fill out a district transfer sheet, since I live in the district for Pacifica High School. We filled out all the forms, but it was too late, for all the spots for the school were filled. I definitely didn't want to go to PHS, so we chose Rio Mesa High School. This is how I got where I am today!

Music Talk

Lately I've been listening to a lot of alternative-type and hip-hop instrumental music, mostly by Flying Lotus and Claims Casino. I usually listen to their songs when I'm doing homework or just chilling somewhere. As I type this, I'm listening to a track called "Hello" by Yung Gud; he makes beats for this rapper named Yung Lean. Weird name but great music, in my opinion. My favorite album by FlyLo is "1983". I don't have a favorite album by Claims Casino, but my favorite song by him would have to be "Crystals". In the YouTube comments for the music video for "Crystal", some people were saying that the song had a dark/nightmarish feel to it. To me, the song feels like something I'd be playing while cruising through a city at night. I think why the song feels like this to me is because the first time I heard it was in a video game while I was driving my in-game car at night... lol. Anyways, these guys make pretty cool music and I recommend you check them out sometime!

Link for Yung Gud - Hello https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UiPMVDNfW9o
Link for FlyLo - 1983 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rmFTc51Zk0
Link for Claims Casino - Crystals https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nY2uqXDWy2M

Pic of Yung Gud 

Pic of FlyLo lol 


Pic of Clams Casino 

What I Thought of... A Sound of Thunder!

"A Sound of Thunder" is an interesting short story about time travel which gives a great example of how the Butterfly Effect works. The Butterfly Effect states that "small changes in the initial conditions lead to drastic changes in the results." Ray Bradbury, the main character, goes on a time safari way back in time to go hunt dinosaurs. Now, going back in time to kill dinosaurs sounds like it will make a difference in the future if the Butterfly Effect is true, right? Well, one of the men, Mr. Travis, who works for the time safari company goes back in time, before the next customer is supposed to, and marks dinosaurs that will be killed soon by natural disasters. The ones he marks are the ones that are hunted by clients, because killing those ones won't make a difference in the future since they die soon anyways. In order not to change the future in a different way, the time safari company built a walkway for customers to walk on when hunting so that they do not accidentally step on a certain type of flower, bug, etc. While on the time safari, Bradbury gets scared after seeing the dinosaur, backs out of killing it, and runs off the path. After the others kill the dinosaur and find him hiding in the time machine, they go back to the time which they came from and find that everything has been altered. The main differences compared to their reality before they traveled back in time were that the president was now a dictator and that spelling was completely different. The reason why everything changed? When Bradbury ran off the path, he in turn kills a butterfly. Simply killing a butterfly changed everything. Bradbury's consequence for altering the future was death, given to him by Mr Travis.

This story made me think about how little things that seem irrelevant can actually be life-changing.

What I Thought Of... By the Waters of Babylon!

I enjoyed reading "By the Waters of Babylon". As I was reading it, I imagined the setting to be hundreds, maybe thousands of years ago, in either Europe or North America, but it turned out to be far from that. The story is actually set in the future, in what is a post-apocalyptic city in New York, turned this way by bombings. John, the main character of the story, is one of the Hill People that lives in what I think is a wooded area of New Jersey. He has dreams of going by himself into what they know as the forbidden "Place of the Gods", which is actually just a city in New York. The gods were really just humans who lived there. I think the reason they referred to the people as gods is because of the abundance of giant skyscrapers, cars which the Hill People knew as chariots, and the streets, which the Hill People called "God Roads". Towards the end of the story, John goes into a house and finds a "dead god" in a chair facing his window. It was here that he realized the people he thought were gods were not gods, but men and women like himself.

This story reminds me of the movie I Am Legend but without the zombies. The overall setting and loneliness John feels when in the city, like Will Smith does in the movie, gives it that type of feel to me. I recommend one reads this story!

What I Thought Of... Harrison Bergeron!

"Harrison Bergeron" is a short story on how society would be like if equality was government-enforced with handicaps. It was interesting to read, and it showed how miserable life would be if everyone was equal in all aspects of life. In today's society, most people are asking for equality, but their request is far from what true equality really is, as demonstrated in the short story. What people of today actually want is equality in certain things, such as men and women being paid the same amount in the workplace and discrimination against religion, races, etc, being non-existent. The story was written during a time where racial segregation was common and people were protesting for equality. I think Vonnegut, the author of "Harrison Bergeron", was trying to warn them to be careful what they wish for, for what they get might be far from what they actually wanted.

Dreadlock Journey: Month Three

So today, October 20th, 2014, marks the third month I've been in the dread game. Up to this point, the journey has been going pretty well. My dreads in the front have stayed tight since the last time I got a retwist, but the dreads on the back of my head have been acting up and coming out. I think it's because I've been sleeping weird or scratching them in my sleep. I'm not sure. On the bright side, they've grown noticeably longer since I first got my hair twisted in late August. 

I have learned A LOT of things about my hair during the past few months, and I'm still learning as I go along. Examples of what I learned are how often to wash my hair in the beginning stages, how to retwist correctly, what products to use, etc. In my opinion, the period of time leading up to before one starts dreadlocks is the most stressful, reason being is that during this time one is looking up all this info on how to take care of dreads, different ways to do them, deciding whether or not to do them yourself or go to a loctitian, and so on. Someone is taking in all this and trying to figure out what to do, which can take a while and be kind of annoying. A couple days before my mom did my hair, I thought I was set because I decided on what I need to buy, only to find more info and change my shopping list. As I progressed after that, I started figuring things out on my own and making changes.

At this point, I'm pretty happy with where I'm at. People are giving me compliments, saying my hair looks longer and that they like it. On the first day of school, some people were surprised that I changed my hair and asking me why I did it, because they were so used to seeing me with a flat top (one of my friends literally said, "noooo, why'd you cut your hair?!" they looked so sad LOL). Lately I've been thinking about what to do with my dreads once they get long. I kinda want to dye some of the tips blond or light brown, but some of my friends think it will look bad. I'll probably do it anyways though. I'm open to trying new things.

What I Thought Of... Nickel and Dimed!

Nickel and Dimed was a long but interesting book. It gave me much insight on how hard it is to make a living in America as a blue-collar worker. These people work extremely hard working service and labor jobs, without which society would suffer, and still get paid minimum wage. They work their lives away day after day and struggle to make a decent living. A quote from the book states, “What you don't necessarily realize when you start selling your time by the hour is that what you're actually selling is your life.”

In class, we discussed how we could stop the poor quality of life these people have to live in. A common suggestion was to raise the minimum wage in order for the workers to earn more money. There's much debate about this among economists, yet slowly but surely minimum wage is rising. I myself believe that blue-collar workers should be treated with more respect in general and paid more than what they are currently.

What I Thought of... Of Mice and Men!

 Of Mice and Men was a really good book. I am usually not a big fan of reading unless the material is really interesting to me, like a car magazine, comic book, etc. This book wasn't any of these things, but I still found myself enjoying it from beginning to end. It gave me some insight as to how difficult it can be to achieve the American Dream, as that was what George and Lennie were doing. They were stuck working low wage jobs, and on top of that, Lennie kept getting them fired. George could have just left Lennie and worked by himself, but he couldn't do that. They were practically brothers, and George knew that Lennie couldn't survive on his own. Lennie was a great and strong worker, but his brain did not work at the capacity most people's do. He was a good person, in my opinion, but without supervision his strength could become deadly, as we saw towards the end of the book when he killed Curly's wife on accident (while playing with her hair, wow). If he hadn't been left alone he probably wouldn't have killed her, and George wouldn't have had to kill him. In the end, it's sad that one best friend had to kill another, even if it might have been the best thing to do.

"I was only foolin', George. I don't want no ketchup. I wouldn't eat no ketchup if it was right here beside me."

"If it was here, you could have some."

"But I wouldn't eat none, George. I'd leave it all for you. You could cover your beans with it and I wouldn't touch none of it."