Sunday, September 26, 2010

America, chill...

After our AIS discussion last week on how America is so centered around being on the move, and getting things done as fast as possible, I decided I'd pay attention to this for a day. It was actually unsettling how many things I noticed. As we mentioned in class, I noticed how absolutely no road I drove on twisted into more scenic territory. I then noticed how the Starbucks by my house was made into a drivethru Starbucks. Aren't people supposed to take a moment to enjoy their coffee? And what ever happened to sitting down at the coffee shop with an old friend, just to chat? I even noticed how my friend's family just recently replaced their decorated, twisty staircase for a boring straight one.
So, okay, what's wrong with just wanting to get stuff done fast? Just recently, one of my family members was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder that causes panic attacks in any stressful situation, which is something that's getting harder and harder to avoid. I did a little more research and found that 40 million American adults ages 18 and older have an anxiety disorder. This is SO much more than in any other country, and I am certain it is because of all the rushing and stressing Americans do. Perhaps due to my more personal perspective, I really don't think all these statistics are okay to ignore anymore. I strongly believe it's about time that work and school hours be cut, and different values be instilled in Americans' minds. While Americans are doing more research and taking more precautions to stop the spread of physical sicknesses, these totally preventable disorders are getting completely brushed aside. They can be just as serious.

Sunday, September 19, 2010

the RIGHT thing to do


It is easy to look at September 11th and wonder, ‘What horrible person could turn a commercial airplane into an enormous missile?’ ‘Why would anyone want to take away so many innocent lives?’ These are fair questions. Ever since the incident, I always viewed 9/11 as caused by pure insanity.
Clearly, I still think of those terrorist as psychotic bastards (excuse my French). But just recently, a disturbing thing entered my mind: They never looked at themselves as the enemy. In their minds, they were fighting for what they believed in, which sounds an unsettling amount like what teachers and parents have been telling me to do all my life. Perhaps they were even convinced that this is what their God was telling them to do.
Now OBVIOUSLY I am in NO way justifying what they did, but I am becoming curious about where we can fairly draw the line of 'fighting for what you believe in' in other situations. If you are walking around picking up trash to fight pollution, sure that’s great. If you are fighting for your first amendment right by using profanities in the classroom, eh... Would you steal a pack of cigarettes from someone if you were passionate about saving the environment? Would you free all 13 of an old lady’s cats into the wild if you were a strong believer of animal rights? What is ‘right’? Where can we draw the line?

Sunday, September 12, 2010

McCandless was a man in the hole... Or maybe Cinderella?

Last week in AIS, when we were given the Vonnegut reading on the patterns most ‘interesting’ stories follow, I found myself immediately putting Vonnegut’s theory to the test. Most of the stories I could think of fit one of his little graphs perfectly: Harry Potter, Twilight, even The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants! I was about to give up proving Vonnegut wrong when I thought of a story that was actually right in front of my face. Into the Wild!!! I tried to fit the story of Chris McCandless in to one of these graphs, but I was stumped. Chris wasn’t really a “man in hole”, because he didn’t begin very happy. Unless of course Vonnegut was referring to just his wealth, in which case the beginning position of ‘good fortune’ would make sense but the end would not. Chris’s story didn’t fit “boy meets girl” either, because indifferent was not how he began his story at all. If I had to choose one, I suppose Chris could’ve fit the part of Cinderella. He began his story very unsatisfied, and as he succeeded to free himself from society he slowly started to climb towards ‘good fortune’. Perhaps the great upward slope was his arrival in Alaska? And maybe the great dip towards ‘ill fortune’ was his consumption of the poisonous berries that ultimately killed him? However, it was the end that really got me thinking. Was the skyrocketing slope to infinite good fortune perhaps Chris’s death? Because it was only then that he was finally freed from society and its selfish, poisonous wrongs. However, I know some would view the story of Chris’s life as the ‘Kafka’ graph. This would mean he started as a nutcase and his idiocy brought him to his death, which was the infinite plunge into ‘ill fortune’ on the graph. Personally, I believe Chris was more of a courageous man rather than a nutcase, which leads me to believe his life follows the path of Cinderella. Others, however, might view this differently...

Monday, September 6, 2010

You are what you have...?

So as most of you AISers know, we had to write a biography on the ‘late’ Mr. Bolos last week, using a box of his personal belongings to help us draw our conclusions. According to Mr. O’Connor, examining someone’s things can tell us a whole lot about them! The moment Doc OC ;)set that cardboard box on the table before us, my mind drifted way back to the summer before seventh grade when my friend and I decided to bury our own little time capsule that we were to dig up the summer after our senior year of high school. I thought of that day briefly as I dug into the box, but I soon forgot about it. Days later, I was staring at the notes I had taken on Mr. Bolos’s artifacts, trying to piece them into the little I knew about his life. This was basically a guessing game. A rubber mouth? He must’ve been a dentist! From that bar of ‘wash your sins away’ soap, he was clearly insanely religious… A picture of the girl’s basketball team? He must’ve loved basketball! And girls? These artifacts taught me nothing, or even took me down a completely inaccurate path. Again, I was reminded of my time capsule. Slowly at first, I began to remember what I had put inside. Several pictures of Cole Sprouse, a plastic tooth filled with a couple of my old baby teeth, a picture of my fat black cat, a list of my ten favorite things (1. hot dogs, 2. funnel cake, 3. full throttle…). If anyone were to write ‘The Life of Kasia’ based on this box of things, they would’ve deduced that I was an overweight, cat-and-pre-pubecent-boy loving weirdo that did sick things like save decaying teeth… I don’t even like that cat.
So this all brought me to the conclusion that you really can’t learn a lot about a person based on some things they have laying around. No disrespect, Mr. O’Connor, but asking us to learn about Mr. Bolos by looking at some of his things was misleading if anything. If people are what they have, then I’m just weird.