Mike/Mark's Totally Sweet Blog

how celebrity obsessed are we?

Tonght when i sighned on to AIM, AIM Today's webpage came up and there is always i guess you could say like teenage interested headlines running across, and when i looked one was a picture of Miley Cyrus eating a french frie. The caption read Hannah's Hungry (clever alliteration) and i clicked on the link and this website is dedicated to themed pictures of celebrities. And when you look to the left them have such topics as, celebrities working out, celebrites wihtout make-up, celebriteis at the beach, embarrasing pics of celebrities. And the question i have is who really cares? like no one else has had a bad picture before or no one else has been caught off guard all sweaty and gross at the gym or who wants to see 13 pics of celebrities at the gas station i mean WHO CARES. I really think the paparazzi and the 'supply and demand' of what paparrazi think people want to see has gotten way out of proportion and now is really teatering on stupid.

Relating back to Woman Theme

My friends and I were at the Jewel in Glenview this past sunday night, and we decided to go to the self-checkout lane to pay because we only had a few things and also it's still kinda fun for us to scan things, but anyways there was a woman on the machine who was supposed to be demonstrating what you do, and what was funny was the way she was dressed, she was portrayed,she was white wiht shoulder length brown hair, a button up blouse on, and she had pants that went up to what looked like her rib cage. And yea she was exagerated a little but it was interesting to see how the Jewel-Osco company would stero-type a woman who might be shopping at their store, which the stero-type seemed to fit the portrayal of an average stay-at-home mom. And this jsut interested me in the way she looked and how she was supposed to appeal to other costumers and it's jsut crazy like how much thinking the makers of this step-by-step program on how to self-checkout it took them to figure out how to make an average white woman.

Does this make you sad?

Something that really humbled me in today's class and really made me think about how luckey i really am was seeing Tammy's story. It made me so sad to see her singing to herself and walking in the rain 10 1/2 miles to her job at Burger King that doesnt even pay enough, and her kids dont support her or barely like her and she is still relatively content with the way she lives.

While Reading..what to think about Gatsby?

While sitting down to read chapter six and seven in the Great Gatsby today, I looked back and remeber how on friday Mr. Bolos excentuated the point about if Gatsby is a symbol of America? And i just feel with two such interesting chapters to talk about dreams, and the purpose of life and love; I hate the topic of if Gatsby is a symbol of America. I'm assumising hear that Mr. Bolos/O'Connor want this question to bring up to point of the american dream and it's relevance and yada yada blah blah if you can or can't climb the social ladder. While thinking back on how to really think about Gatsby I'm kinda confused on what to think because in one sense he had all this success and money all for daisey and that is kinda remarkable and honorary but at the same time he lied about his education and up bringing and in my opinion I think money is reallly and always be the main component of social class and if you have enough money you can totally move up.

What is my green light?

Today in class when we wrote down what are main 5 goals for life are and had to narrow it down to just one. What i ended up having was to be "rich" and the people around me laughed and were like come on Mark why of all things would you just care about being 'rich". But my point is, is that to be "rich" is very subjective. For example I would want to be rich with knowledge, rich with family purpose, rich with health, and the normal connotation for rich, which is to be wealthy or have money. So that is my point where I would want to be "rich" in alot of ways rather than just money. Does this make sense? and what are some other peoples most important life goals?

I would really like to hear.

Are We Living the Lap of Luxery?

In response to today's interesting discussion in class, it got me thinking. I know we all on the north shore live pretty nice lives and are really luckey and i always knew that but i still thought most of us are middle class, thats why i was surprised when only about 14 people said middle class today but than when Mr. Bolos said that 90% of the people on the North Shore and upper class it was just really weird to me. Just in the way of how we try to be modest and I've never personally lived a life altered from the North Shore and i though Ali brought up an iteresting point that we still look up to people around us who are "richer" and we still look up to like Hollywood but to think of someone looking up to the life that I lead seems so odd to me. I definitly see how we are in the upper class now from the stats Mr bolos put up at the end of class but somehting still in me feels like we're not and its just kinda scary to see the deseption i see and the filtering type way that this life i've lived for 17 years is like every other normal 17 year olds life.

Bix box chain stores?

In a world of Wal-Mart, Target, Cosco, and Sam's Club one is made to wonder what's happening to our cute small business's like whatever happened to the neighborhood butcher or fresh fruit stand at the Farmer' Market or now everyone buys flowers bulk at the grocery store instead of a Flowershop or the shoe repair store where now people would just buy new shoes. I know i sound like a grandpa saying this but the quality of things are just not adequate anymore, or like a vacuum store and if there was a problem they would fix it and the people at the grocery store would know your name. I mean what happened to the old fashioned way things used to be.

Possibly the most suicide provoking comercial ever!

I don;t know if everyone has seen these commericals, but the recent LUNA carpet commercials are so weird and annoying! I'm sorry i had nothing better to blog about but these commercials are possibly the stupidest comercials on the planet, you know the one's with the wife sterotypicalyl being obsessed with her new carpet and giving it compliments and the husb and comes out of the bathroom laughing at her basically and i just think it is the worst advertisment for carpeting, like seeing a woman being in love with her carpeting does not make me want to go and get the carpeting, and now they're doing spin off;s of these comercials with like the man loving his hard wood floor;s and they are just really annoying and cheapily made but ironically happen to be sponcering every program i watch! If you havent seen them here is the link to one of the comericals. Also in the commercial check out how the man is just casually walking out of the open bathroom, like he couldn;t hear her or in the short duration he was in there; she came in and layed down on the floor starting to compliment her life-less carpet!

Junior Theme (HELP!)

For my Junior Theme I'm going to do how kids are a target for marketing and advertsing today and just how much kids consume or make their parents buy them things. I'm really interested in the subject and I have a good book and I'm excited but I'm having trouble finding more sources; like I've been looking online which I'm nervous about because some sources may not be legit and Mr. Bolos gave me a good book. But yea i think i still need to do alot of work before i start writing the solid paper or drafts.

Why is Our Generation Reality Show Obsessed??

Today while looking through the comcast guide and seeing what was on the different channels, i saw that out of like 20 channels more than half of the shows were reality shows. Something i have never noticed before is just how present reality shows are, and really what is the point of them all? Or T.V. competitions like it all started with The Real World, American Idol, and Survivor and to think that now how many reality t.v. shows are on television. I tried to find a statistic or some kind of survey online but i couldn't but just to think of ALL the reality t.v. shows that we watch and just how pointless they are and how stupid they are and their concepts for example Fox's "My big fat obnoxious fiance" from 2005 and just what makes me wonder is how this craze got started and how sick and sad it is that we as a country our interested in all these stupid shows. or this picture of fox's stupid idea of anchor woman of a hot shot from L.A. came to a small town to be a reporter. I mean i would love to see the statistic of Fox's and Mtv's reality shows only aired for one season. I know i'm kind of just ranting now but also who watches these shows and why are we so interested in normal people and forced "drama"

Celebrities doing the Punking??

Tonite while channel surfing it said "Pop Piction" premiere on E! and i had never heard of the show so i decided to watch and i had rememeber in all the comercials they had been very descrete with giving the plot of the show away and so i wanted to know what it was about. Well now i know and its about celebrities turning the table on the medias outrageous rumors and the over-aggressive paparazzi and how celebrities play tricks on these people to see how gullable they are.

So when i started watching it was Paris Hilton and this guy dressed like a "guru" who was actually just some plain biker from San Francisco and she took him out shopping to a boutique and a bookstore and then to dinner and it was so funny how at the end of the night 20 paparazzi must've been around her and scoping out what this guys intentions were, and then the next day it was all over internet blogs, T.V. and magazines and what was funny is that while reading People last week i stumbled upon one of these pictures and it said Paris's new enlightener and i felt kinda stupid now for believeing it but how clever of what a huge reaction this was.

Then the next one was Avril Lavigne and her husband her husband have been rumored lately to be pregnant so finally once they were fed up; they decided to get in on the show too so Avril put on a fake baby-bump and her and her husband and their two friends and body guard went out shoping on Robertson Ave. which is where The Ivy is in hollywood and alot of other celebrity boutiques so they walked aorund shopping and all these paparazzi just sourrounded them right away and they went into this little childrens store and she was looking at cute mini-converse and boys clothes and they came out with a big and then of cource the next day again the headlines were all saying like Avril's Expecting a Skater Boy and just all these crazy ideas that they went on a shopping spree for baby clothes and everything and the clerk at the store said they just kept laughing and avril was just gowign and couldnt stop talking about the arrival of the baby. And it was just really funny how it was blown out of context when that was not what happnend. So props to E! for a good inovative show!

That number is tax?!

When talking with my mom today I learned that in Chicago the sales tax is going to go up to 10% from the pervious 8.75% and this just seems outreageous to me. Also that Chicago has the highest sales tax of any other large city in America! Paying 10% sales tax seems so high to me and i'm not even a full consumer of products. But just think if someone were to buy a $35,000 car just the tax on that would be $3,500!! I can't believe sales tax can be so high when other cities like Las Vegas don't have any sales tax at all. Just think as a kid i used to save up $3.00 to ride my bike to Walgreens and buy candy. And now if i kid were to do that and buy 3 candy bars at 99C the total would come to $3.30 not even a quarter could cover tax. Now i know i sound like a grandparent complaining about "these days" and it doesn't seem like that much but in the long one just one american is spending thousands of dollars a year on sales tax and for chicgago to have the highest sales tax today seems like a big con to living around here.

Abortion a thing of the Past?

On the travel channel there is a show called Living With the Tribes and it follows the Namal tribe who live on Tanna Island - a small island that is part of the Vanuatu Islands in the Pacific Ocean. These african people know of our modern would but like and feel stable with there practices from over a thousand years ago. Yet on the only episode i watched they were building a new canoe to go out in the ocean and fish and all the men in the tribe go and its a big deal but one man couldn't go because his wife was pregnant again with what would be their fourth child and they literally could not take care of this one child that they were about to have so the man went out deep into the jungle and cut down branches and squeezed this red juice out of its almost instinct bark and it would make the baby die and it was an old old method but to see that even a thousand years ago this tribe had a way for abortion and people still do that there and this couple had to keep it secret from the tribe because it was seen as bad luck to cut down these distinctive branches that grow in the forest. So it was interesting to me to see how it connects to our time and how if you get an abortion its all hush-hush but that a thousand years ago there was a way to get rid of a baby and it actually worked. SO i thought this realted to our class discussion recently on abortion and the media and just interesting of different contraceptive methods.

P.S. another american film where abortion is present is Dirty Dancing and when you think about it the film is almost centered around this girls need for an abortion.

And Best Director Goes to...

When watching the Oscar's tonite before they start the dragged on process of the award giving for each category before they go into a large process of seeing a movie with past works and past award winners. And during the Best Director one i could not see one female winnging ever. And as seen here the BEst Director Oscar has never gone to a woman. This ties back to our theme Woman and Children and i believe that this awards is second to last which gives it one of the most substantial positions and rank but then why has a woman never once in all 80 years of the Oscars never won and this raises the question if woman are alot more powerful in todays society can they still get any farther or for that matter are some things never going to change? Just liek the Agustun Golf Cource political cartoon that was brought up in presentations on thursday.

Age Limit for Kids in School

Something that I have been torn about since our childhood survey last week was the issue on what age kids should be allowed to legally quit school. And some people were saying 18 years old and some people were saying 12 years old and to be honest i almost agree with Joe's response of saying 12 years old because the less kids that are in school the more the kids who are in school will thrive. I mean think about it, if all kids were able to quit school when they were 12 first of all i believe that the majority of parents would have them stay in school but for the ones who did quit i would feel like i had so much more of a fighitng chance to be succesful. For example if there were less kids in a class we could get more attention on us and how we are progressing and there would be less competition for college and who is getting in and also later on in the job market if someone see's that you have a college degree or even a high school diploma you would be taken for that job over the kids who did quit school. So really i think the class was being kind of naiive when saying that kids should stay in school when even though if it is selfish i would let everyone drop out because i know my parents would make me stay in school and evidently i would in some ways be more succesful in life.

I know that i did neglect to think about if all these kids werean't in school would our crime rate go up or would college be even more expensive and all the cons of having kids drop out so i guess i will never find out if it would be a good thing or bad thing.

Are Pennies Needed???

Tonite when i was watching a little bit of "60 Minutes" there was a special with a biochemist at MIT and he has been fighting for getting rid of the penny and that 2 and 1/2 seconds are averagly wasted duirng american transactions becuse of pennies being handled. And on average EVERY person in america wastes on average $41 worth of pennies per year searching for pennies and putting them in a cup and with all the population we as america waste about 10 billion dollars a year on wasted time with pennies. And i would just like to know how everyone really feels about this and if we should get rid of the penny. I personally think its bogus and we would lose more money as an economy because of all the american jobs lost from people who made pennies and that getting rid of pennies just seems kind of ridiculous and i would like to know some of the long term affects on currency and just the price of things without the penny would be cheaper or more expensive.

Disney Tokenism...

During the SuperBowl while watching some Disney Channel with my little cousins i saw an add for Snow Buddies a new movie about a bunch of golden retriever puppies making a snow sled and racing it in Alaska and this is a sequel off of Air Buddies which is the same concept but the puppies play basketball and one of the charecters is called "B-Dawg" and he wears a "bling" chain around his kneck and has sunglasses. And i think that this obviously is making a charecter to be parralel with the omni-presenet "ghetto" society in our culture today. And i think this kind of parralels to the N word we have been discussing with Huckleberry fin and when i went on the website you can read each charecters profile and the terms used i think are really kind of crude and mocking and i think this gives kids a connotation of wanting to seem gangsta today which could lead them to bad things in their future and i believe it also gives kind of a secret message to the fact that it almost adds to an ongoing stero-type which i believe sumbitting this to a target audience of young impressionable kids is a really bad thing. For Example in B-Dawgs profile it lists his likes as "Basketball, bling, and rap" and in his snow buddies profile it says "B-Dawg is a hip-hop home pup, don't let it go around or it could ruin his street cred! and Yo, thats whats crack-a-lackin! (which apparently is his key phrase) BUt i just think this gives bad credit to black people in general when there being sterotyped as being only gangsta.

i tried to put the links in to these profiles

http://adisney.go.com/disneyvideos/animatedfilms/airbuddies/index.html (Air Buddies)

http://adisney.go.com/disneyvideos/liveaction/snowbuddies/ (Snow Buddies)

Pregars Parking???

Recently when going to new malls or new parking compelex's I've started to notice more and more that there are signs that say "Parking for New and Expectant Mother Only" next to or near handicaps spots. I don't know exactly how to feel about them yet because I understand that getting the stroller out and carrying a baby or being pregnant is very hard yet with our new theme of woman or children I thought this could be a parralel with woman being unequally treated or maybe a bias towards woman. But for some reason in my gut I feel that this is kind of wrong because for decades woman have delt with a baby and know that when traveling with a new baby or traveling when you're pregant can be sometimes very difficult but in this case i don't really feel that it's right to give them special parking where if one is handicapped i can understand but in now way do i feel that a woman with a new born or an expecting mother is handicapped. But i still don't really know what to feel and i would love to hear some feedback on what other people feel about it and not having first hand expierence with a new born or a woman that is pregnant i understand that i could be seeing somethings from the wrong perspective.

Why is our youth not voting?

I recall that during the last presidential campaign many influential and younger celebraties joined a cause titled "Vote-or-Die" and there point was to try to raise the percentage of eligiable voters from 18-24 to vote. Many celebraties from P-Diddy to Paris Hilton were involved in the campain cause and by the end of the election still less than half of our youth (18-24) was not voting and even Paris Hilton didn't "get around" to voting. Seeing how about half of our class can vote in the next election when talking to my friends on if they're going to vote or not most of them are either unsure or do not want to go through the miniscule task of registering and voting but then this raises an important question of if we the people of America have really the right to critisize George Bush or any other president when it is almost kind of our fault that we were the ones who put him in office or we were the ones who didnt vote.

Why don't we celebrate the holidays after the 26th...

Leading up to The Holidays this year and watching the news from time to time and ALWAYS hearing about the sales forcast about how you know Jc Penny's is nervous this season won't turn out to be as profitable as we hoped or today the sales of stores is lower and some department stores are nervous that this seasons forcast could run them out of buisness. And it just bugs me that it's kind of implying that the holidays are all about getting gifts or the first thing people ask you after the holidays is oh what did you get?Not like oh did you celebrate christmas with your family, did your relatives fly in, did you spend some fun times with your parents? It just seems that as the years go by families have just started to grow more and more apart and during the holiday season all anyone cares about is the presents and what to get people and all the worry and anticipation that goes into the holiday and my uncle was telling me actually how much he hates the holidays and that his kids are just always disappointed on christmas or that you know on christmas eve or the day before or the day before Chanukah starts everyone is just worrying about if they left anyone out or if they were able to get that one special gift or maybe they could spend just aother $50 on somehting nice for the kids. I mean the older and older i get the more i seem to dislike the holidays. Or how the day after Thanksgiving when everyone should be hanigng with the family or eating leftovers; people serioulsly get up at 4:30 a.m. to make it to Kohls at 5:00 a.m. to hit the good sales. Or also the days after christmas or new years you always see that every store is trying to have a sale and get rid of there merchandise fromt eh holidays and start fresh. For example i was at Sharper Image a couple days after christmas and i saw the exact same neck massager i bought my dad for half-off. I mean its all kind of a scam that you'll buy things full price and literally 3 days later there on sale. Or for example the first people to get the i-phone paid something around $700 for the phone but then somehting lik two weeks after its debut it went down to aroud $500 and how upset everyone was and just what a scam everything is or how the i-pod has had so many new updates that for people who bot the first one two years ago would be frowned upon todya for having it still. I mean just there's always something new to want and how my uncle said no one is ever happy i mean sometime the holidays and the society we live in get to me.

Christmas Tree..whats the point?

During this past holiday season my brother and i again told my parents that we wanted a real tree vs. taking out our fake tree that we keep in the basement. For as long as i can remember from my childhood though i would always wait till my dad brought up our faux tree from the basement and set it up; it never really bothered me not having a real tree and i could really care less as long as we had one. Yet as my brother and i got older, we wanted a real tree and to go pick it out and have it smell good and fresh and yea it was a good all around time. Till this year i never really thought about any negatives that were coming with a real tree. So one day after school my brother and i met my parents at The Chalet and picked out a tree. I never really understood the difference between the different type of tree but since we started getting one we had always gotten a Frazier Furr. So we picked out and the nice man put it in a net and straped it on to the top of our car. Than the total came to something around like $130 my parents didnt say anything but when driving home with my brother behind our parents, i brought up how much the tree cost and how expensive i thought it was. I mean with the tip and the tree the total came to $150. My brother shrugged it off and said what ever its christmas Mark who cares. But it really bugged me to spend so much money on a tree that we'll end up having for three weeks. I mean really when i think about it, it's such a hastle to bring it in the house and screw it in the tree stand and make sure its perfectly erract so it doesnt fall over and then to put the lights on and the ornaments took up a whole two and half hours. This year was also a bad year for tree's according to my father who read an article in the news paper. So everyday after school i was the one who had to take the pitcher and climb under the tree and water it then also really i never appreciated the tree. Nor did i ever sit in my living room and look at the tree. It kind of seems like a waste of time and a waste of a good amount of money. I mean a faux tree is fine i think and most already ahev lights on them and most are already in the stand so really all you do is put up the ornaments and dont hastle around with it. Also many fires during this season happen from tree's being too dry and then if the lights get to hot the tree can catch on fire. Also cutting down all these tree's is kind of horrible too; even though they do grow back pretty rapidly. And also to take down the tree and dismount it from the stand and then if you kept it through new years it might be pretty dry so then all the needles from the tree get on the floor and then carrying it out to the curb and getting obnoxious sticky sap on your hands and clothes then taking down the lights and the ornament to untangle the lights again next year and yea so over all i enjoy having a christmas tree but i believe it is kind of a waste of patience and next year i hope we will use our faux tree.