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.

when watching tv and skimming through the paper i never noticed how lazy Americans are getting and how all these anti-biotics are in the end actually becoming bad for america. Like in the 30's when all these crazy anti-biotics came out and all these people never finished the full prescription and now all these crazy bugs and a small flu is killing people, that scientists can not find treatments for these genetically altered Super Bugs that can kill anymore. And you see a treatment for everything! and in the past few years people are just getting over diagnossed and so many kids have been wrongly diagnosed with ADD and ADHD and americans can't even change there diet for high blood pressure, high cholestorol, and also all these people getting diabetes and all these crazy miracleweight loss pills cannot be good for ones body and how in hospitals they are starting to give placebo pills or sugar pills like how everyone thinks theres always something wrong with them and just with obeciety getting so much more common is really making people scared for the future.

this week in AIS on friday we discussed and took a survey i guess on how "the american dream" is pursued or what america or an american life is about and the basis off it i guess. And alot of the questions really left me thinking hard and to answer them i was really confused and striken with alot of like fussyniss on how to answer and which answer to pick. And when thinking about a life and what i believe in and what my dreams and perspectives are on life and i came to the conclusion that i think that there are really no definite motoes or perspectives you can have on life b/c life is always changing and something new and unexpected may always show up so i think you can just go through life with a clear outgoing opening and just keep living and being thankful for your chance to live but just be open to whatever is next and worry when that time has come b/c you only have one life to live.