The Man

The man is here and  he is destroying the world...but who is the man? The man is man kind, and we are of that species. In today's society there are people pointing fingers accusing everyone else for the problems here on Earth, but the real problem with society is not due to a single person, it is due to the fact that people are standing around watching destruction of human kind. We as the people creating war and population and neglect are solely responsible to recognize our errors and work to change what is occurring.

The misconception that it is the governments fault for all of the problems that are happening around us as Americans is completely wrong. Many of us sit around and complain that our government is spending too much money on things, but then do nothing about it but elect more politicians and leave it to them to figure it out, but the truth is that the government doesn't have near the power of our capitalist economy. We as the people must form together and use our capitalist machine to rebuild our nation, we must take on the responsibility to make jobs, not ask the government to do it for us while we send call centers and factories over seas. This is a new era, people are getting lazy, but we mustn't loose the nation that we have fought so hard to keep free.

Stick it to the man, take on some responsibility.

Not Allowed

Humans are considered to be the most innovative and creative species that exist on this watery rock that we call earth, but I for one must disagree. Although my views of our species have already been more towards the negative, I must say that after reading Slaughter House Five by Vonnegut I must say that the image humans, and I, have painted defining how we live in this world with each other is heresy within itself.

One aspect that especially disgust me about people is that some of them are ignorant enough to place bans on literature that many have never read. Among these books that have been challenged and banned in recent years include Twilight, the Chocolate War, Harry Potter, To Kill a Mockingbird, and more. In the last decade alone there have been over 100 books that have been challenged or banned. This type of outrageous ignorant behavior has been leading the way of disgust, offence, and outrage by everyone in the pursuit of knowledge and person growth. Many of these books were written with the message of kindness and love and equality at their core, but in history these values are not upheld, rather smothered under the wrath of ignorants and illiterates.

This type of oppression is equal to that of Hitler and Mussolini and other tyrants and dictators. The squandering of new ideas and disposing of basic morals that guide a person through life, upholding the values of the most prominent document in American history, the Constitution of the United States of America, which state quite plainly that people should be able to have "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness..."

Lets Come Together

A movie that I really like that outlines war, although not completely, is Across the Universe. It is a movie that is centered around the Beatles anti-war songs and deals largly with Vietnam and the draft. It is about a brother and a sister who go out and make all sorts of crazy hippi friends, but when the brother is drafted things take a turn that will divide everyone. when the brother goes to the army center, he does everything he can to escape the draft, but in the end he is forced to go. While he is gone his sister goes on some wild adventures with "puff the magic dragon", but throughout the movie it cuts to scenes of him in the war. I don't want to give too much more away for those twerps who haven't watched this movie.

I am pretty sure that this is an anti-war movie because not only is it done to the music of an anti-war band, but it also puts a very negitive display of  war out to the viewer; at one point the charactors tried to burn the draft notices in protest to war. This movies main goals were definatly to bring a stong imagry to the Beatles songs and send the message of anti-war and peace to people. Some connections between Across the Universe and Slaughter House Five are the ideas of children fighting wars, non-linear naration, un-reliable naration, and a grotesk representation of war. I think both the movie producers, the Beatles, and Vonegut all agree that war is a place where adults use kids to settle there differences. For those reasons I think that Mrs. Mary O' Hare would greatly appreciate the message that this movie is sending about war, and she may even become a Beatles fan!

Metamorphosis: Nothingness

When Ryan Krattiger woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a photon. Soon after though he was no longer in bed but out the window, unable to stop but incapable to go faster while traveling at the speed of light. Within the first few moments of being awakened, he had seen most of the country that he had never known to exist, having only ever been exposed to the darkened halls of his torturous high school. Now leaving the village limits, he was beginning to come around to what was going on, "where the heck am I?!?". Alarmed by his proximity to the world Ryan had no idea what to think. Then the idea rolled itself into his mind...or what was his mind. He was a photon. But how could this be? Photons were massless particles of light, simple collections of pure energy. Wait this is amazing, pure energy; never losing, never gaining, just traveling at the speed of light from one one of the universe to the other. "But wait, what about my family? My job? My dog, oh not my dog I can't think of not having my dog!" Ryan, now exasperated in his moment of realization loses focus and suddenly plummets into the burning layers of the sun. At this point there is nothing left to say, photons are never "lost" but it seems that I have lost this photon in the vast sea of photons of the sun, never to be distinguished again. A loss of another little fragment of light, left to go infinitely through space, flying at the speed limit of the universe, never slowing never stopping, only going