One More Day

Today is Thursday, that means one more day until spring break. It hasn't exactly been an easy week before break. Today I had three tests, one quiz, and the in class essay. It doesn't look like it will be easing up tomorrow either. I have three more tests. The thought of sleeping in and doing nothing for a week should get me through the day though. As soon as the bell goes off after sixth hour I will be home free. Only football lifting then I'm on my way home.

For spring break I'm planning on going to New Smyrna beach in florida with a friend and my family. It should be a good time. Nothing to worry about, no snow, and no homework, well at least I won't be doing any. Break always goes by so fast for me and the next thing I know I'm back in school on Monday.

Hopefully tomorrow doesn't go to slow, and before I know I'll be on break. I know the last few classes we seem like an eternity but hopefully all the tests will make it go faster.

Kleptomaniacs

I've narrowed the topic of my essay once again. I'd like to focus more on the shoplifter, and why they shoplift. I'm still going to include where shoplifters go most often, and what stores do to protect from them. The main focus will be the mind of a shoplifter.

I'm probably goin to write the paper in second person for the most part. Like I'm describing to someone what a shoplifter goes through as if they're the shoplifter. I think it would be a different way to get all of the information I researched across. I'm trying to get across what makes a kleptomaniac act the way they do so putting the audience in the shoes of one of these people would be effective I think.

I'm wondering if i should switch back and forth between the different tenses or if I should stay in the second person for the whole time. Also, I'm not even sure if second person is the correct tense. Leave a comment if you know what tense this is- "You wonder why you can't stop. Your heart rate starts to race, and you walk in."

Pogs

I was cleaning out the bottom of my closet the other day when I stumbled on a shoebox from a while back. I opened it up and started looking through a stash of elementary school memorabilia. When I came across a few token shaped pieces of cardboard I was immediately brought back to 3rd grade. Those pieces of cardboard were Pogs. A short lived trend of the 90's. 

Pogs were used to play a game between two people. You would stack fifteen of these cardboard circles on the floor between two players. Each player then takes a turn throwing a "slammer pog", usually thicker and made of metal or plastic, on top of the pile to knock as many pogs off onto their opposite sides. You got to keep the pogs that flipped over while the ones the didn't flip over were stacked back up for the next player. The person with the most pogs at the end of the game wins.

I didn't play the game a lot but I do remember collecting the things. I had pogs from my favorite tv shows, pogs with athletes faces on them, and pogs with peace signs and ying-yangs. My favorite was a metal slammer pog, shaped like a table saw blade. I thought it was pretty hardcore. I'm sure a lot of you guys remember the game and some of you probably still have your pogs, but I'm willing to bet my red power ranger pog that I would beat you.

Lupe Fiasco

I'm sure your no stranger to all of the hip-hop that's taken over the radio. You can't escape it. Many people despise it. I don't mind it for awhile, but after hearing the same thing over and over again for more than a few songs I get tired of it. I'll listen to it on occasion, but there's only so much to be rhymed about cars, girls, money, and booze. 

A couple years ago a hip-hop song came out called, "kick push". About the life of a skateboarder. It was one of Lupe Fiasco's first unconventional songs to gain attention. I downloaded a few more of his songs and started listening to him some more. His stuff was a little different than most rappers. He didn't write about drugs or hoes. His lack of "street cred" has probably kept most of his songs out of the top of the charts, but he doesn't seem to care.

I bought his newest CD, "the cool". It's got some good stuff on it. Some of these songs I've even started to hear on the radio. Like Hip-Hop Saved My Life, and Dumb It Down. These songs along with some songs from his last CD "Food and Liquor" like the track Daydreamin' have started to gain popularity. In Dumb it Down he clearly bashes the rap industry for it's ways, and talks about how he's not going to dumb down his music to be popular. People have slowly started to agree with him and get into his music. You should listen to some of his stuff for yourself if your into rap.

Shoplifting

Today in class we did an activity where we wrote about the topic we had chosen for our research projects on a sheet of paper. We left the paper in our seats then rotated around leaving comments and questions on other people's papers to help generate ideas. I gained a few things that I could explore on my topic. Some questions people brought up on my topic of shoplifting were

-What stores have the most shoplifters?

-What goes on in a kleptomaniacs brain?

-What are the penalties for shoplifting?

-What measures do stores take to prevent shoplifting?

-Why would a celebrity ever shoplift?

A lot of the comments people left were about how they thought it was a pretty interesting topic and they all seemed to have about the same amount of background knowledge about it. I learned that shoplifting is a major cause of inflation in the country. The most common suggestion I received was to research what types of people shoplift, and what goes on in their brains that makes them feel compelled to steal. Some interesting facts brought up were that maybe the habit of stealing is passed down heretically, and that it's a mental thing.

My paper will be about why people feel compelled to steal mentally, how they go about doing it physically, what the stores do to prevent/punish for it, and I'd like to find a few interesting stories about certain shoplifting incidents to use also.

The Office

A few years ago a friend of mine on the football team introduced me to what is now my favorite show. NBC's "The Office". I'd hear him everyday ripping off these ridiculous quotes from some show. I asked him what the "office" was about and he told me it was on thursdays at seven, so I decided to catch it the next week. 

When I turned it on I wasn't sure what was going on. It's filmed in sort of a weird format. It's a documentary of everyday life within an Scranton based paper supply company office. The character's know the cameras are there and often acknowledge them with a glance or shrug in Jim's case. Every so often they will cut to an interview of one of the employees in the conference room ranting about their feelings, or something their outrageous boss, Michael, has done. 

Every episode takes place over the span of a day. They all usually start as a normal day until Michael, the boss, does something outrageous, or Jim, a salesperson, plays a prank on Dwight, a dorky salesperson who takes his job wayy to seriously. The show is pretty unique in it's format and it takes some getting used to. If you watch a couple episodes you start to catch on to it's humor, and it's pretty hilarious.

research topic follow up...

I started to browse the internet for information on the two topics I've narrowed it down to. The witness protection program, and shoplifting. I started on google and ended up browsing for a while on both topics.

The first topic I started researching was the witness protection program. This google search gave me plenty of results. The problem is, they were all the same, they were pretty vague and all about the same thing. They talked about how the program works and what you have to go to get into it. There weren't any interesting stories or anything, just the same governmental facts. It got a little boring reading over and over and I'm not sure if i could write a whole paper on it.

When I turned to my next topic the information I found was a little more hope full. I was able to find a lot of different things about shoplifting. What type of people do it, why they do it, how they do it, and a lot more. There are a lot of sources on it because it's a common problem people often try to overcome. 

Right now I'm leaning towards writing about shoplifting. The research about it was a lot more interesting to read and I think that it could make a better paper, and less boring one to write at that. 

The iPod

One of the coolest presents I ever received for my birthday was an iPod. This was before every kid on the block had one, so naturally it was a big deal. At the time the ipod I owned was the 2nd one to come out. This was before nano, video, touch, or super nano ultra video 5.0. All it did was play music. The screen wasn't even color but who cared, no one had even seen a color screen yet. Anyways, I thought it was the coolest thing that i had one. Of course now all the kids who didn’t have on at the time now own much newer ones and can store many times the music. 

I won’t forget going to Best Buy with my dad for my birthday and picking one off of the shelf. I couldn’t wait to get home and put my CD’s on it. Which at the time included Jock Jams, NOW (1st one), Queen, the Lion King Soundtrack, and Backstreet Boys Millennium. Don’t judge me, this was fourth grade and I’ve changed for the better, although the Lion King is still one of my favorite CD's.

After Getting home I ran to the computer to figure out iTunes. It took me a couple hours, 1.5 of which I was on hold with the help line, but i figured it out. I quickly added all of my CD’s to the computer than loaded them onto my iPod. The iPod was such a big deal to me that I never really used it because I was afraid to lose it. I never took it to school, but got my use out of it on car and plane rides, gradually added new music and erasing old, except for that Lion King. It's still on there along with thousands of others. 

YouTube

Whenever sitting around with nothing to do I usually end up wandering over to my computer. I'll surf the internet for a while, go to facebook, or go to the ravens website. I always end up at youtube somehow. I'll find some funny video and then another, then another. It's really sad, how much time I can waste just watching these videos.

I'm not sure why, but there is something entertaining about watching others act like idiots and film themselves. The stuff people think up is pretty amazing. There are some videos that make you cringe and others that can make you laugh 'till you cry. I like to think that by watching people do stupid things I gain a slight bit of wisdom. Not that I'd ever try bungy jumping with a garden house or riding my bike off the roof. It just makes me feel a little smarter all the victims of these videos.

One video that especially shocked me was of two boys putting the back tire of their moped on top of one of those metal roundabouts at the park while two girls held on. They revved the motor and got these girls spinning around so fast they flew in the air and off of the roundabout out of the picture. At first I thought it was fake but no, there was a whole trend going on with this same act. Kids were being seriously injured over and over by doing the same thing they saw in the last video. I found around 10 videos of kids doing this same thing on the roundabout. And in every video they flew off and landed motionless many feet away,  I really don't know why but they had to find out for themselves.

Spring Break

Only a couple more weeks, I keep telling myself. School just seems easier for me when I've got something to look forward to. Right now, it's spring break. I get more anxious every day leading up to it. When it comes down to the last couple days before break I just zone out. I know all you students know what I'm talking about. I just keep telling myself I don't care, that I'll deal with it after break, and I just go on autopilot...

It doesn't even matter what you do on spring break, as long you're out of school. And frustratingly, no matter what you're doing that week goes by too fast. You're having fun and relaxing everyday then the next thing you know, your slammed back into school and forced to deal with everything you put off in those days leading up to break. 

I don't mind going back to school too much. I just try to set my sights on the next weekend or next break to come. It doesn't matter when, just as long as I have something to look forward to I'm fine. Some people say it's not good to live in the present from week to week, but I beg to differ.

high school state basketball

Last night the kennedy boys played in the first round of the state basketball tournament. They've had a really good year with only two regular season losses. They were great through districts and last night they started the last stage of their road to a state championship. I think the team can win it all this year, they have a team full of seniors who are really determined. Some of the guys have been playing varsity for three years now.

I got to the stadium with a group of guys around 330. They wouldn't even open the gates until 530 so we walked around for a bit then decided to just wait at the gate. People started to slowly line up behind us until 530 when it was packed and they finally let us in. The student section filled up with white extremely fast and everyone got a good show as we won by 5 in a game that got a little too close for comfort.

research paper topics?

I have brainstormed a few different ideas for a research paper.

-The first one is something along the lines of steroids in sports, or baseball more specifically. I've read about the topic a little bit before and it might be a little boring for a whole paper.
-The second topic I thought about is shoplifting, emphasis on shoplifting in teenagers and why they do it/ psychological reasons.
-Another topic is the JFK assasination, i think it would be easy to find info on and a lot of soures atleast.

gotta catch 'em all

   The past week my grade has rediscovered their love for a childhood game. Pokemon. The fever has caught on all over again. You'll see kids walking down the hall with their gameboys bumping into people and not even looking up. Red, Blue, Gold, Fire, Ruby, or Saphirre, doesn't matter what version you own, everyone has dug up the games from their past. I laughed at first when I saw my classmates playing their gameboys during class, and thought of it as stupid until i got home that night.

    I dug out my old Gameboy and starting looking through some old games. That's when i started to remember how fun it was. When I found my dusty pokemon cartridge i spent a good minute blowing it all off then plugged it in. The theme song clicked on and immediately brought me back to 5th grade. I started over and deleted my old game partly because of the fact it was filled with all sorts of pokemon I had named in 5th grade, like my level 55 charizard dubbed "boobs".

   Once I started I couldn't stop. I forgot all about my homework and 3 hours later I was stuck in Saffron City with a blastoise that wouldn't even obey me. I realized how my grade could become so sucked in to the game, so practiced a little restraint and put the game back into the bottom of my closet so i could begin to study for finals, I don't think I'll be getting sucked back into pokemon for a while though.