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.