No Hablo Ingles

   So, this summer I acquired a job at the Chicago Botanic Gardens, working in the cafés that are situated there, and I think that that was the first real experience I had being a minority.
   For those who don't know, I am whiter than Conan O'Brian and, statistically, am in the"majority". Keep in mind, throughout this post, that the is merely a social construct. As my French teacher says, "Il y a une espèce: les humaines" (There is one species: human).
  Typically, especially in service and manual labor, the workers seem to be overwhelmingly immigrants. Why? Think of it this way: if America started have some really big issues that we're affecting everyone and lots of us began migration to say, Canada, we probably would take whatever jobs we could get as well.
   At the Botanic Gardens, the majority of people who landscape and work in the kitchen are Hispanic. I got to work in the back of the kitchen a couple weeks ago. I made jell-o and pudding cups and wrapped cookies. I love that kind of stuff, but I felt lonely. If I needed help, there was only one girl I could ask and she was pretty busy, and I could only ask her because everyone else were native Spanish speakers and I didn't want to assume that they automatically spoke perfect English.
   Also, nobody was talking to me. I didn't speak Spanish and everybody else was laughing and chatting around me and I felt alone. I wished I had taken Spanish in school but I also realized that I was getting a sense of how it feels to be a minority. There's just this feeling of loneliness that comes from being separated from society based on your culture or the color of your skin.
   I think that us in the "majority" often forget how it feels to be on the outside so noticeably. It's hard to imagine for us sometimes that racism exists because we never see it because, physically, we "fit in".

Shouldn't Make a Difference

I am a female, if you weren't aware, and I watch television (I know,shocking). But, what if I told you that more often than not,when you are watching my fellow ladies on TV, you are seeing the same woman over and over again?
  Below, I am going to show you three promotional posters for some of network TV's most watched shows:

NCIS

Look at the women in these posters. Notice how they look, physically first. Do you see how every single one of them is wearing neutral, fitted clothing? How they seem to be on the taller side? How all but one of them is Caucasian and has the same slim, curve-less, body type?
Don't get me, wrong, I'm not saying that having a character who looks like this is wrong, but having all your characters exactly the same seems very constricting to me.
America is a country made up of different body types and races and personalities and styles. I don;t think it's right that these are the only women network TV show because it helps perpetuate the idea that there is a "normal" way to look.
That idea is ridiculous. I know people who have had eating disorders, and I think that veery girl is insecure about herself in some way, partially due to the way we are portrayed in the media.
And i bet, that if you watched these shows, and were asked to give each girl a personality trait that differentiate shed form the others, you would be able to find little to nothing to say.

The New PIC

         First off, the acronym PIC stands for "Prison Industrial Complex". Just thought I'd get that out of the way. Secondly, many of you may be wondering "Why, what is the prison industrial complex?". Well my confused friend, the prison industrial complex, or PIC, is the idea that for economic reasons, state owners of prisons have been selling the majority of their prisons off to private companies. Those private companies have people invested in their stocks and those private companies need to make money. One of the ways to make money for them, would be to have a lot of people on prison, whilst cutting down on some of the "expenses". The result is that a lot more people are being incarcerated and given longer sentences for non-violent crimes, as well as the fact that the amount of prisoners in the U.S. has increased a lot.
I think that the show(on netflix, bear with me) "Orange is the New Black" does a really good job of illustrating how the American prison industrial complex works. I can jut surly using this show as a source because it was based off a memoir written by Piper Kerman about her experiences in a women's prison. She was given a 15 month sentence.

P

The reason why I think this show illustrates the PIC so well is that it shows how difficult the PIC makes it stay out of prison once you've been in. *SPOILER ALERT*One of the supporting characters called Taystee(stop laughing) finally gets her case re-evaluated and is out of prison. She is super excited and practically dances into the van that will drive her away. However, several ekes later, she shows up in prison again to the shock of her friends. She said that she purposely put herself back into prison because it was better then living on the outside world as a former convict. She was working a minimum wage job and had no place to stay and at least in prison she had a bed and regular meals. Even when I applied for my first job last year, there was a section on the résumé where I was forced to answer whether or not I'd been in prison.
The prison industrial complex makes is easy to stay in the cycle of incarceration, even for those who want to stay out of it. Another example: I was watching "30 Days", a show where Morgan Spurlock, director of "Super Size Me", went voluntarily to a men's prison to see heat it was like. There, he met a man who said that he finally wanted to get out of his gang and find a job. However, in the end credits,  it was stated that the man was in prison once again.

Why We Fight?

    It's no secret that America spends a TON of money on its defense system (military, creating new weapons), so much money that we have been referred to being a part of "the military industrail complex", a system where we spend millions of dollars giving private companies contracts to make the latest weapon and defense technology.

Here's a startling statistic: If you look to look at the graph posted below and did the math, you will see that U.S. spends more money on it's defense system than all the other countries (listed down below that is) combined.

It is now a perfectly valid to ask the question: Why is that?

    Last night I went to go see "Thor: The Dark World" and there were tons of previews. The majority of those previews were for movies set in high tech futures, movies with robots and spies and gadgets and explosions. and that's not the first time I've seen movies come out like those. It mad me wonder if, culturally, we as Americans are focused too much on being the best all the time. Oftentimes, we refuse to see our own faults and instead try to be the hero at any cost, running into people's business, feeling like we have to be on top all the time. It's exhausting. Our budget is getting tired (I think it fell asleep some time ago) and i think that we as a people are getting tired as well. Our spending, be it on high budget gadgets or flicks, seems to be just another example of why we need to take a break, step balk, and remember that it's okay not to win at everything. We don't have to pretend to be perfect and maybe it's time we all just stepped back and took a deep breath. 

What About Them?: Part 2

Welcome to Part 2 of my Typhoon Haiyan post. Now that you have been given all the information, I want to look at the picture that I posted in part 1 and talk about what thoughts it has instilled in my mind. First off, if you would like to see the picture click here. I am not posting the whole image again, mainly because it could be a little graphic for some people.

                Now, if you choose to look at the photo you will probably see a young woman lying on the rubble of a makeshift medical shelter. Draped over her lower abdomen is a strip of cloth that is splattered with blood.  Medic’s rubber glove can be seen in the corner. According to the BBC, the woman had just given birth to a baby in the city of Tacloban, one of the hardest hit areas in the Philippines. The woman is holding onto what I assume to be the father of her child as he looks at a chair covered din cloths which I am pretty sure is where the baby is sleeping.

                This image was one that really made me wonder: what about the people? Whenever we hear about disasters be it human crimes or natural disasters like this one, it seems to be all about statistics: this many people died and this much aid is being given and this is how long it lasted. Facts are good, don’t get me wrong, but I was wondering last night about the people who made up the numbers. What were they doing while we're hearing about all this? What are they doing while they’re waiting for us to give them aid? Some might be like “oh crap I’m going into labor” like the lady in the picture and others could be doing other things that can’t be stopped by a typhoon such as arguing with their parents.

                It’s difficult to imagine what it must be like to be a person among all those statistics, and I can’t even begin to think about how long the days and nights would be with nothing to do and nowhere to stay, waiting for everyone on the other side to do something besides update their Facebook status to “like to save the Philippines”.

What About Them?: Part 1

        

               

        So, I don’t know if anybody’s heard but there was this huge typhoon in the Philippines. More specifically, “Typhoon Haiyan” which has left at least 10,000 dead and about 673,000 displaced. The U.N. has launched an appeal for $300 million to try and help everybody there. The city of Tacloban is said to be the worst affected, with everything and everybody in disarray.  There is a relief effort going on but with all the roads and transport areas totally destroyed, it is difficult to reach people.  This post will have to be done in two parts, largely because this post is mainly for information, and also to let you see and absorb the image and view the links below, if you wish.

:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24901993 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24910918

WARNING: the picture I found below is one that really struck me and is a crucial image to the point that I am trying to make in the next post. However, it is a little graphic. Nobody’s head got chopped off or anything  but a few smatters of blood are visible so if you react badly to that, then feel free to close out.

“A 21-year-old woman lies exhausted on the debris-covered floor at a makeshift medical facility in Tacloban after giving birth to a baby girl. The storm surge swept away her mother.”

-BBC

Why "30 Rock" rocks

 
   

My mom and I started watching "30 Rock" together since, it was on Netflix and we'd heard it was good. I ended up passing her by about 5 seasons but that's not the point. The point is that "30 Rock" may be one of the best or at least, most unique, shows out there and I'll tell you why.
  Tina Fey's character is I think, the element which makes "30 Rock" so great. So many times, especially since television writing is a male dominated industry, female characters seemed to be used for one of three things: The personality-less/ too-attractive-for-him wife (George Lopez, Everybody Loves Raymond, every single Disney Show), the "tough" girl who wears booty shorts and fires a gun (every action movie ever), or the clingy girlfriend (see any TV show on Spike). Tina Fey's character (Liz Lemon) is none of these.
   Her character manages to be strong without shooting people up, has annoying quirks without being boring, and has an actual personality and loves and hates things and isn't perfect. I think that there should be more Liz Lemons on television and in movies. It's hard to explain just how awesome of a role model she is because there is so much depth to her that female characters often seem to miss. I can't explain all the things that make up Liz Lemon, all I can say is that if you really want to see for yourself, go watch "30 Rock". It might surprise you.

Is College Worth It?

Student loans! The freshman 15! Moving back in with your parents!
    These are the things that students nowadays might think of when they think of college. With my parents it isn't even of question of whether or not I'm going to college but where. I tried to explain to my mother the point I am about to try and make in this post and she got this horrified look on her face and I couldn't even explain myself because for her there is nothing to explain.
   College is expensive and it used to be that you only went to get high paying or skilled jobs like being an account or a doctor. Nowadays however, unemployment is still an issue and you could go to Harvard and end up working in a Starbucks simply because in this job market, you're degree in philosophy means nothing.
    So what is college for then? That's what I'm wondering as I try and rack my brains to think of where I want to waste my parents money for 4 years.

NRA: National Rifle Anxiety

          
           I am worried about a lot of things: college, homework, actual work, but most of all how this world is going to end up.
           I found this article on the majestical Internet today (as always linked below) that mentions a shooting at a Nevada school that occurred this very day. Gun violence seems to be an almost standard news story today and I worry about whether this is the future.
         The article stated that an unidentified student opened fire in an assembly and killed a beloved teacher as well as wounding two other students.
        This isn't the first time shootings like this have happened. 2013 seemed to be the year of ruining people's lives be it another war, bombing the Boston marathon, Sandy Hook, and now this.
         I wasn't alive in many decades before this, sop I don;t know if sometimes there are just periods where violence just escalates. I don;t know if this is just a phase or if this violence and this mental; instability is the way our future is going. I'm scared. I'm scared of all the wars and all the nukes and all the people hating each other. I hate it.
       I don't know everything and I can't fix everything, but I'm just wondering: Is this the way our future is going? Is this what America and the rest of the world has to look forward to? And are all of you as worried as I am?

The article: http://news.yahoo.com/student-kills-teacher-hurts-2-boys-nev-school-213556027.html

You is Smart

      There is no homework in Finland. It sounds to good to be true but, just this week, Finland made the Wall Street 24/7 list of the Top 10 Most Educated Countries.

        But, how does one measure education? According to the article which I will link below, the WS 24/7 "Reviewed the 10 countries with the highest proportions of residents aged 25 to 64 with a tertiary education in 2011. ". The list goes as follows:
10. Australia (they got shmancy new programs for international students)
9. Finland (I wish I spoke Finnish)
8. New Zealand (fun fact: sheep outnumber people 4 to 1)
7. United Kingdom (popular with international students and girls who love British accents)
6. S. Korea(because K-POP isn't everything)
5. 'Murica! (yet, ironically, our 16-24 year old display some of the lowest mathematical proficiency)
4. Israel (like Korea, they have mandatory military service so many college kids are older)
3. Japan(they have it all: thinnest developed country, double the U.S. literacy and highest grad. rates)
2. Canada (I believe we should all try and be like Canada cause they're cool)
1. Russia (they have always been big on education, especially since Communism rejects religion, but now there are rumors of corruption. I still love Putin's pop song though.)
         So that's the list. I have to say, I'm not surprised by how our results came out. The reading and literacy issue I know must be true because a few years ago I babysat this little 4 year old boy and not once did I see him touch a book. All he wanted to do was watch TV on his computer and play on his little kid iPad. 

Here's the article: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/most-educated-countries-world-102232490.html

In the Middle of Nowhere

       

        Ohio. I had never been there up until last weekend when my mom (being my mom) decided that we should start looking at colleges. But that's not the point I'm, trying to get to.
        So, after we had driven up along the interstate to Oberlin we had to get down to a little town called "Mount Vernon". We used the ever so handy GPS to guide us there and we basically took a 3-hour trip through rural Ohio. I just kept staring because growing up in the high income area that I do, I was fascinated by the run-down houses, expansive farms, and various signs that said stuff like "Wood $10" or "Carpentry Services" set up outside people's homes. I had not seen a single Walgreens and I kept on wondering where everyone went to school or got their burgers because I had seen nothing resembling shops or grocery stores. It's just weird I think, for me, addicted to Amazon as I am, to think that people might just be living a lot more simply than I was and were perfectly indifferent about it.
       The one thing that was constant in all these little "towns"-if you could even call them that- was a church. There was always some kind of skinny white church with a sign that read something like "Blah Blah Presbyterian  Church: do you know Jesus?". I was just so fascinated by everything and I think it's because I'm so used to living in a town that's pretty close to just about everything- stores, hospital, restaurants, schools- and I sometimes forget that the "water" in which I swim is not the only kind that makes up the ocean of people that is America. (BTW I'm very proud of that metaphor)

The End of 'Murica?

      So, I don't know if you've heard, but the government has shut down. All across the land of rich white men there is silence. A small child might ask "Oh wise one, what is this all about?" and I might say "Well little Jimmy, it's about Obamacare." but if little Jimmy asks "What's Obamacare?" I will shrink into the darkness from whence I came because all I know is that it lets me take my meds for only 5 bucks.

      Honestly, I think it's stuff like this that make me realize how little I know about politics. I saw an article in the Onion(which I will link down below) titled: "Man Who Understands 8% Of Obamacare Vigorously Defends It From Man Who Understands 5%". Gotta love The Onion.

      Sometimes, I wish I knew more. I am always thinking that the world would be a lot better if we just understood each other but it's hard when we don't all have time to watch MSNBC and instead have stuff to do like homework. I think that this article, like much of lives, is painfully real, and I'm telling myself that after this I'll go see the news, but in reality I'm going to go eat dinner and watch Netflix before typing up a 45-minute conversation(school project, don't ask) because I'm not gonna lie and say I know everything about my country's government because I don't. That article really reminded me of uninformed and oblivious we can be but also, on the positive side, that we have the ability to make fun of ourselves. Unlike Cuba. Lighten up, Cuba.

Fun Fact of the Day

             Croissant. Baguette. Effiel Tower. Haugh haugh haugh! Congratulations you can read French!
 I'm kidding of course, that would all be horribly offensive to my French teacher, M. Greaux who inadvertently gave a lesson in culture whilst also teaching grammar. So, in French and English, there are adjectives and let's say, that an American person saw a really awesome movie (*cough cough* Les Mis *cough*) and that person might, when asked about the movie, use adjectives like: "Fantastic! Great! Super! So good! Awesome Possum! or I'm dying right now". A French person might see the exact same movie, feel the exact same way about it, but when asked they would say "C'est pas mal" which means "It's not bad." Sometimes people might think that Americans are too sunny or that the Europeans are too cloudy but honestly it's just a matter of how reserved our culture allows us to be when expressing feelings. Apparently, if a German saw that movie they might say "It's not to be despised" (according to M. Greaux). Anyway, I just though that was an interesting thing to think about for the day.

Grey of Thrones

            I don’t know if anyone has ever read or seen Game of Thrones, but I have. Just for the record, that means that the majority of this post will be around that topic so if you plan on getting into that fandom I suggest that you take a moment to think about whether or not you want to enter into my land of spoilers. I repeat: SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

            Okay anyway, in class today we were talking about the biased language and connotations of words that were in an exert form a history textbook about American History, more specifically, Native American and settler issues. Our conclusion was that the author’s bias was clearly towards the Native Americans as the good guys and white people as the bad guys (Don’t get me wrong I know we were jerks back then) but it also made me think back to when we were studying the Cold War last year as well as Stalinist Russia and how everything in history seemed to be laid out so black and white: communist bad, capitalist good, or capitalist bad, communist good, Indian good, white person bad, and it all seemed so simple. But how, you might be asking, how does this relate to Game of Thrones?

            When I gobbled up the books and the television series like Nutella To-Go I knew that I loved the series but I couldn’t figure out why I loved it so much. I mean, it basically is about a war caused by two twins who couldn’t keep it in their pants and the author keeps killing off all the characters. But, when I really thought about it, the reason why I loved that series so much is because it is everything that we aren’t used to seeing. Instead of being a bad guy and a good guy, you don’t know who to root for. Do you believe in Tyrion, the awesome imp who ever lived who just happens to be on the side of the twins who do each other? Do you go with the Starks, who seem like your average good guys but who all are basically dead by the end of book 5? Or do you go with Danaerys and her dragons who will probably get to Westeros by the time they invent cell phones? I love those books and those episodes because they are what history is like. History is not just this guy did this, thus he is evil and the other dude is good. No, history and our perspective on it really depend on where we are and how our culture functions. 50 years ago, there probably wouldn’t even be a section about Native American culture in textbooks because how they felt wouldn’t have mattered. Anyway, I’m sorry if this was a bit long, but I really hope that when and if you read a history textbook or watch a movie, challenge yourself to think about how the other half lives.

American Dreamless?

So since I normally can't be bothered to actually find a newspaper or a TV show and surf through all the news, every day I try to go on yahoo which easily accessible through my crappy laptop and that is where I found an article which I will link below. Basically, it was talking about how the idea of what "the American dream" means has changed, that instead of wishing for a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence and two straight children, people now simply long for basics like financial stability, being debt free, and having a well-stocked retirement fund. Then the article asked if we as a people were becoming more pessimistic about what we could achieve and if cynicism was on the rise.
    I am not a person who does well with change, I try and avoid it if I can, but, society is constantly changing in every country including America. Stuff happens, for us it was the whole economic downfall, before that, the sexual revolution. Women can vote! (I’m shocked too) and Colorado recently legalized marijuana. We may not be getting more "cynical" per say, but instead we are growing more "realistic" we are changing with our world. Is it a good change? Hard to say. Some people might say it's sad that we are wishing for what seems like so little. But honestly, that's what I think I've always wanted. And maybe, after all these years of war and job loss and protests, Americans feel like laying low for a while, watching some crappy TV, and not having to worry about whether they can pay for the iPhone 12345S.

The American Dream

American Studies: Photo Assignment 1

"I don't have to pick those up, they're not mine!"

This photo is one that I took a couples days ago after getting home from school, entering through the garage door, and laying my eyes upon a sight I was very accustomed to: A collection of shoes that belonged to me and my siblings, carelessly tossed off before we retired to our separate homework zones. But of course you might be wondering, how does a picture of lazy teenager's shoes reflect on America? that is a question that, I will be honest, I took some liberties with. because, here's the thing, really, all this is is a picture of some overpriced shoes that I took with my standard phone camera. This photograph, if you look at it, contains a variety of shoes, all facing in different directions, all different colors and styles, so different, yet smushed together. I think that America suffers a bit from this "water we live in syndrome" (If I may be so blatant in relating this to class). The groups like the Westboro baptist church, NRA, anti NRA people, vegans, non vegans, conservatives, and liberals, all of us sometimes seem to forget that the other half does live, and even though we are all genetically and emotionally human beings living in the same world, we don't always think about that. I was at work the other day, and the guy I work with, Manuel, was going to the sink to fill up the caramel heater, and he said "You know, we are really lucky to have running water" And I hadn't really thought about that before, but it is true that while me and my friends are trying to find the coldest fountain(in the music building apparently), there are other people sitting in the house or the senate, trying to decide whether or not we want to blow somebody else up. And, back in Syria, and Russia, and Iran, and Iraq, there are people too, people who just want to watch their favorite TV shows and get their morning coffee. And, at some point, all of the pairs of shoes in the world will have to face each other and the American flip flop will say to the Russian sneaker: how's it going down there?