6th post

In the movie “Rent”, there are these lyrics to a song that caught my attention. They are:
“The heart may freeze or it can burn
The pain will ease if I can learn
There is no future
There is no past
I live this moment as my last
There's only us
There's only this
Forget regret
Or life is yours to miss
No other road
No other way
No day but today”
When I first heard these lyrics I thought to myself, how cute and sweet. She is singing to her boyfriend who is pretty stressed and upset. She states that she lives this moment as her last. What!? Why would you be in a cold room singing a song if it is your last moment to live? Why wouldn’t you do something crazy and exciting? Then she sings about how there is only this and us. That is what I like to call a double S; Selfish and Stupid. She is clearly not thinking about anyone else and how they can be affected if they did something stupid just for themselves. Think about it, if I wanted to live my moment as my last and only think about myself, and not worry about the consciences, I would rob a bank! And robbing a bank is wrong because it usually involves violence and guns and hurting other people. And ok, I guess it’s alright to forget regrets, but doesn’t making poor choices help us learn and do better for the future. If I didn’t worry about the future, why would I go to school and be typing a blog about all this? Next time you want to write crazy romantic song lyrics, think about the logic please.

oooppsss

Forgot to do this, will finish it later :P

Annotated Citation #2

Humphry, Derek. “Why assisted suicide for the mentally troubled is so problematic” Assisted Suicide August 2006. SIRS researcher. http://www.assistedsuicide.org/as-for-the-mentally-troubled.html

Derek Humphry, worker for the “Assisted Suicide” website, believes that assisted suicide should be legal. He claims “Many people have great emotional and ethical difficulties in helping a person dying in great pain to a dignified end, thus it follows that helping a mentally ill person with assisted suicide is enormously problematic.” He talks about how this applies to both physicians and family and friends. He also brings up the “The right-to-die” movement. People have the right to continue to live or not, but should we help them die or help them not die?

Annotated Citation #1

This is my research question:
Should assisted suicide be legal?

Messerli, Joe. "Should an incurably-ill patient be able to commit physician-assisted suicide?" Balanced Politics March 2007. SIRS Researcher. http://www.balancedpolitics.org/assisted_suicide.htm#no.

Joe Messerli, who works for the Balanced Politics site, is against assisted suicide being legal. He has many reasons that it should be illegal, but starts off with the
"Doctors' Hippocratic oath". This oath is "First, do no harm". Making assisted suicide legal would be a violation of that oath, and it would lead to a weakening of doctor-patient trust. Obviously, the doctor would be harming them by killing them. He has many other reason also such as that it demeans the value of human life, and that doctors are given too much power, and can be wrong or unethical .

4th Post. Hooray...

Hello there. This is my fourth post this quarter. Here I go. So as I said earlier, I am done with my “Speak” book, and now am I moving on to my “The Tenth Circle” book. I haven’t gotten a really good start on the novel yet but so far it talks about how Trixie is a straight A student and how she is the perfect kid. Trixie Stone is fourteen years old and she is in love for the first time. She's also the light of her father's life, a freshman in high school who is pretty and popular. She also always looked up to Daniel Stone, her dad, as a hero. Because of this, I don’t like Trixie. Just kidding, I don’t mind her, and I know already that she is going to be raped soon so I feel bad for her. Anyways, I was reading this and then wondering if Trixie’s last name “Stone” has anything to do with her or her family’s character. Does it represent that they are hard and cold as stone? Or maybe that they are strong and almost unbreakable? I don’t know yet. Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with the story at all. I’ll read more about it and get back to it later. Last Thursday I was in charge of the Pumpkin Pie and I had to make it from scratch, so my mom gave me a HUGE long cooking recipe on how to make the dough and everything else. I read it out carefully, and if you didn’t make the dough just right, it could mess up completely. I hate baking things like this because there is too much pressure. Cooking should fun, easy, and enjoyable. Plus it was annoying how I couldn’t do it all at once, but instead had to do one thing, freeze it, do another thing, wait some more, do another thing, let it bake, and so on. It just all in all took way to long. Hopefully next year I’ll be able to cook something else that will be more fun to do.

3rd Blog post...finished the book.

I ended up really enjoying this book so much that I finished it all already. I think I will start reading the book that I originally chose, “The Tenth Circle”. Both of the books talk about the lives of teenager girls that have been raped, so I can some how make a connection with them when I do my project at the end of the quarter. Anyways, the "Speak" book was very well written, and it was my favorite kind of writing style. The author managed to develop realistic dialogue for teenagers, and was able to express what teenagers are going through and how they feel. I liked how it ended with not everything living “happily ever after”, but more realistic. The author gave off a lesson saying that you can control your own future, and you can control how you let things affect you. The author also talks about how much communication is important to function well and to live a healthy life. Melinda, the main character, was raped and didn’t tell anyone the whole entire school year. She had an awful year, did poorly in classes, skipped school, had no friends, and had a bad relationship with her parents. If she had told someone in the first place, she could have had professional help, and maybe have lived a better year at school. The book had some really nice elements to it also. It showed real problems that most teenagers have at that age, and how that characters deal with those problems. It showed others that they aren’t the only ones going through things like that. Overall, it was an excellent book with a powerful message to speak up for yourself, and I would definitely recommend it to others.

2nd Blog post for quater 2. New book!!!

Originally I thought I was going to be reading “The Tenth Circle” written by Jodi Picoult, but last week in class I changed my mind. On November 14, we did a writing activity in class, and I used the first few pages of this book called “Speak” written by Laurie Halse Anderson. When I started doing my assignment and reading the book, I was hooked. It really grabbed my attention. Mrs. Burgess said that I could borrow the book since she had it in her classroom. I asked her if I could read it for my outside reading and she said go for it. So here I go. The book starts off with our main character Melinda Sordino starting her first day of high school. She has no friends since she called the cops at a party she was at this past summer. No one will sit or talk to her. It’s horrible. She doesn’t like school except for her art class. Her assignment for the year in art is to make trees into meaningful messages. All of her teachers seem to have a weird thing about them. Her parents aren’t much better either. No one ever is home to have a nice family dinner. She makes one friend who is new this year from Ohio. She doesn’t seem to fit Melinda’s personality at all. Way to talkative. Melinda keeps mentioning something horrible that happened at the party to her, but she won’t say exactly what it is. I’m excited to see if her school year gets better or worse, and if she makes any good friends.

1st post of "The Tenth Circle" by Jodi Picoult.

I am going to be reading “The Tenth Circle” written by Jodi Picoult. I heard of this book from one of my friends. I originally asked her if I could borrow the book “My Sisters Keeper” since I saw her reading it in math class last year nonstop, but she said that she thought I would enjoy this story a bit more. I decided to trust her on this decision, since she knows so much about literature. Also, Jodi Picoult wrote “My Sisters Keeper”, so that is a coincidence since she is the same other of “The Tenth Circle”. I decided to do some research on this book before officially deciding if I wanted to read it or not. I went and looked up a review about it. The review stated that this novel included violence, drama and death in it. I don’t want to sound morbid or anything, but I think I will enjoy this book because it will keep me interested and awake when I read it. I am excited to start reading this book that sounds a bit mentally deranged yet exciting. Hopefully it will be an enjoyable experience.

7th post! Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the Dallas Brass!

Last Tuesday on October 21, the Dallas Brass came into town to perform with the Edina Varsity and Concert band. If you are not familiar with the Dallas Brass, they are a group of six men who tour around playing brass instrument, and teaching clinics. They are very famous, have played in front of a few presidents, and have been around for over 25 years. This talented group consists of a two trumpet players, one tuba, one French horn, a drummer, and one trombonist who is the founder and leader of the band. They have become one of America’s foremost musical ensembles. So when they came here to Edina, we performed a concert with them. In the programs that were handed out, there was a long article about how the Dallas brass was originally founded, so I read it. The crazy fact is that the idea of the Dallas Brass came from the Edina band concert in the 1970. When the trombonist, Michael Levine, was a junior in high school, he drove to the Edina Pops concert, and watched the band perform. He stated that it was the concert that changed his life. He grew up in St. Louis Park and wasn’t that interested in music until his junior year in High school, when he randomly went to an Edina “Pops” concert, and it blew him away. From that moment on, he knew that he wanted to play music for a profession. He said that he left that auditorium on such a high, that 38 years later, he still isn’t completely down from it. He has seen hundreds of bands, but non like Edina band. Edina has a strong influence in the Dallas Brass. This article really inspired me, because it shows how lucky I am to be in the Edina band program. Since I want to do music as a career, I am going to have a greater advantage rather than others since I went to Edina. This article and concert changed my perspective on music, and influenced me even more into to doing what I love, playing music. Hopefully one day, I will be able to inspire someone else into doing what they love.

6th post. Political debate!

The new issue of Zaphyrus at our school just came out. It was all about politics. I, personally, am not interested in politics at all, but I thought to myself since this newspaper was written by kids my age, maybe their political views would be more understanding for me. I have a great deal of relatives that are republican and independent. All my friends are democrats. This is not fun for me. I have one friend who is especially into debating about political views. I have been in a car ride where she battles it out with my parents. Let’s just say it is not fun for me. My friend tells me to read the back page about Obama VS McCain. When I read it, it made me a little upset. Instead of stating good things about Obama, and how he can help our country, the author of the article just wrote about how stupid republicans are! He made fun of republicans by actually saying that they are not intelligent. He may not agree with republicans’ point of views and beliefs, but he has no right saying that they are all dumb. The author offended my family. He did a good job writing, but he had so many down putting facts about republicans and their feeling/decisions that it turned me off. What I found the most amusing was at the end of the article when the author wrote that we should all be like liberals and refer to the issues instead of personalities for once. What I hypocrite! In the end this was a disappointing experience for me because I ended up not learning anything about the facts of the candidates, but instead more about how each others personalities are dumb. Hopefully one day I’ll decide for myself what I believe in and fight and talk about the right reasons to vote for a president.

5th post! Katy Perry.

I saw on the cover of a Blender Magazine a picture of Katy Perry, so I picked it up and started reading. My friend had just been recently complaining about how no one knows Katy Perry for any other songs besides “I kissed a Girl”. This frustrated her because she said that her others songs are great and she is a very talented singer. I read the article all about Katy Perry that was in the magazine. It had many details from the beginning of her life all the way to what she does now everyday when she is on tour performing. Katy Perry’s real name was actually Katy Hudson. She lived with two siblings and a mother and father who were both pastors. She began her musical career when she was only 17 with her first album in 2001. Katy acts like she is one of the guys, but in reality she spends 2 hours doing makeup. I find a lot of this humorous because it is hard to imagine a singer such as Katy Perry being born and raised by two Christian Pastors. Another girly aspect of Kerry is the fact that she hasn’t performed a show once without wearing a new and different outfit or style. When I first thought of Katy Perry I thought that she was a new, selfish, spoiled, but after reading this I figured out that she is a human being and that she does have feelings just like the rest of us. It humored me when I found out that not just one, but both of Katy’s parents were pastors, because you usually wouldn’t think that a pastor daughter would be very outgoing like Katy Perry. She is devoted to her fans, and hugs them even if she doesn’t know who they are. I admire that because it shows that she is a nice and outgoing person. I hoped that this taught me never to judge someone based on what other people say on them or their looks, but instead ask and find out who they really are themselves.

4th blog "Cancer" by MCR

Today I was listening to MCR on my ipod. I usually skip this slow and boring song, but today it caught my attention. It is titled “Cancer”. I went home and looked up the lyrics. I assumed that the title was just an attention grabber to have people listen to a stupid and pointless song that had nothing to do with Cancer. I hate it when a title doesn’t have the same meaning as the song. I read the lyrics to the song and realized that they were very touching. It was about this person who was dieing from cancer. He realizes that he is infact going to die no matter what. He doesn’t talk about how horrible it is for him, but instead talks about his love ones. He repeats over and over about how the worst part of everything is leaving “You”. He is talking to a love one and says that he will not kiss you, because it would be too hard for him to let go. The lyrics also include details of what is happening to him. For example, “Cause I'm awful just to see, all my hairs abandoned all my body”. It gives a visual description of what is happening to him and you can tell that he is dieing of cancer, since people lose their hair when going through chemotherapy to fight cancer. These lyrics really got to me because my grandma died of cancer, so I can relate to it. It was very hard for my mother to let her mom go, and so I know how the love one is feeling because my mom had to go through that too. I hope that when others listen to this song, they will understand the trued meaning of it, and that it will touch them in some way.

3rd Blog Post.

I read the lyrics to the song "The Kind Of Love You Never Recover From" by Christine Lavin, and I decided that I wanted to blog about it. The lyrics in that song described a story of a young couple who were inlove. Thirty years have past and that couple are off living their own lives, with separate families and jobs. They were each others first loves, and they knew that their love was true. In the beginning of the song they were both trying to say that they didn't regret their decisions to leave each other, but they won't ever forget the memories. In the end of the song, they both confess that they do infact regret the choice of leaving each other. They can't forget their first love. Sometimes you have to admit things even though it hurts and you don't want to.  Admiting the truth can be difficult, but its healthier than not being true to yourself.  It s bad to bottle up your feelings, because if you lie to others all the time, then your lieing to yourself.   This song touched me because even though i have not fallen inlove yet, I find this very romantic.   Hopefully I will always remember my first love and have memories that will last forever.  

"The Undomestic Goddess" by Sophie Kinsella. 2nd Blog Entry.

I started a book that actually my mom recommended for me. It is called “The Undomestic Goddess” by Sophie Kinsella. The first few chapters are about Samantha Sweeting making a horrible mistake at her work. This is a big deal for Samantha because she is a “Workaholic”. This mistake could lead to her not having any chance of partnership. Instead of handling it calmly and rationally, she walks out of her office in London and takes a train. She doesn’t know where she is going exactly, just anywhere to get away from her mistakes. My question is “Why would Samantha walk out of her Office so suddenly over one mistake?”. Yes, it might have been a huge goof-up, but that is not a reason to give up! After working so hard nonstop, she probably should have thought it through better. She needed to stop, take a deep breath, and think of something sensible to do. This act was immature on her part, because she did not think about everyone at the office that she let down by just leaving. My question for the next few chapters is “Where is she exactly, and will she go back to her office and face the consequences?”. Hopefully in the next chapters that I read, she will show some maturity and take responsibility for her actions like an adult, or anyone would. I am excited to read what will happen next, and I will probably write in my next few Blogs about this book.

First Blog-This Lullaby

I just got finished reading "This Lullaby" by Sarah Dessen. First off, when i picked up the book at the store i thought it looked interesting because the description on the back stated the plot of the story. When I look for a good book, I try to find a character that i can relate to myself. This story in particular had a teenage girl who seemed to be struggling with everyday problems. I thought to myself, "Oh, I am going to connect with this girl", boy was I wrong. I ended up actually connecting with the Musician Boy in the story. He had a different outlook in life then the girl, and I happened to agree with his more. I'm not sure if its because i am a musician myself, or it just ended up being like that. Either way, it was nice bonding with a male character for once instead of a girl character. The girl in the story ended up bugging me, always complaining about everything. The boys outlook in life inspired me to look and judge people differently. Usually books don't have great affects on me, but this one sure did. I would recommend it for anyone who likes a good "Teen" story. I hope that this story will affect other peoples outlooks in life also.