Losing Trust in a Good Friend

I have been dating my boyfriend for almost a year. His sister and law and I are pretty close. We talk a lot and tell each other pretty much anything. I trusted her with everything I told her until a couple of months ago. The only problem is sometimes I think she’s jealous that she not the only woman in the family anymore besides Ray’s mother. We were talking one day and I told her something that I only wanted her to know. The next thing I knew she had told Ray’s whole family and made a huge deal out of it. I called her and confronted her and she told me that that’s something she could not keep a secret and she felt that they should know. She not only told everyone, but she turned it around on me and made me look like the bad guy. It turned into a big situation and I felt like after all this happened Ray’s family no longer felt the same about me.
She really hurt me in this situation and I no longer trust her with anything anymore. It was hard to let a really close friend go, but after all that happened I no longer felt like she was a friend at all. I learned from the situation not to trust everyone especially with something I did not want anybody to know about. It was hard getting through all the drama but after a couple of weeks everything went back to the way it had been before. It was a bad situation because I was afraid I was going to lose the relationships I had with Ray’s whole family. Everything is better now. Ashley and I get along, but it is definitely not like it used to be.

The Road

I thought The Road was a very good book. It was a book that you did not want to sit down because you wanted to know what happened next. I just wish it would have said why everything was burnt and why the world was the way it was. The man took care of his little boy the whole way through. That is what you call a good dad. He always put the little boy first. If they were both starving he would always let the little boy have the food first. It was amazing that they never gave up. If I had been in their situation i would have wanted to give up so many times. The man always encouraged the boy to keep walking and just keep moving. It broke my heart at the end when his dad died. I was scared the little boy would have to continue the journey alone. He found a nice family that took him along with them. It was a very good book and i would reccomend it to anyone to read.

WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR?

For every 1 gallon of gas we burn, 19 pounds of carbon dioxide are being released into the air for our family, friends and selves to breathe in. Due to this, in 1989 1 out of every 4, 15-25 year olds were diagnosed with lung lesions and chronic respiratory problems and also in 1990, 41 cases of Stage 1 Smog Alerts were announced. Is this how we want to live our lives? Obviously it is because someone out there killed the one thing that was most certain to save our lives. Yes! That one thing would have reduced global warming & money problems, but most importantly it would have reduced the medical problems that the people we love are suffering from today. That one thing was the Electric Vehicle (EV).
The electric car was made in California and Arizona to be tested out and hopefully receive good consumer reviews to one day have the EV the main source of transportation. The reviews and remarks this vehicle received were amazing! Everyone who drove it loved it and many of those people purchased this car and drove it everyday like they would any other. If this vehicle received such great reviews, why had I not heard of it until now? Why do we not see these vehicles out on the roads as main sources of transportation? What happened to this miracle that could have been?
Alan Lloyd, the chairman of California's Air Resources Board held a meeting for one person from each vehicle company to come propose why the EV should stick around. Everyone thought they had 10 minutes to talk, Lloyd cut there time down to 3 minutes. Absolutely no time for anyone to sum up a 10 min talk. Lloyd killed the mandate in 2003. They EV was no more. Reason being there was no demand for the vehicle. President Bush explained that the state recognized car companies were unable to meet the "Clean-Air" Rules (10% of vehicles from 2003-2008 must be electric or zero-emission). So instead of bringing back the 100% electric vehicle, they settled for the Hybrid; which still uses gasoline and in turn still pollutes the air.
The EV ran solely on battery and ranged from 75 to 100 miles per full charge. The average person drives 29 miles per day. That is ⅓ of a full charge. How was there no demand? Why would anyone say "no" to this wonderful piece of machinery? If the EV were to be brought back and offered to everyone, I would definitely give it a chance to see what it was like and if it could meet my needs as a mom, student and employee. I do a lot of driving, but most of it is not needed. I really believe this could change our world in making it a cleaner and safer environment for everyone!

Control Room!

This stupid movie is bullshit! We went into Iraq with hopes to find the man behind September 11, so when we were sure he wasn’t coming out of the town we bombed it! Ok they are giving us hell for us bombing them, showing the nation pictures of all the dead people from the towns that are under turmoil... Ok how about we show them the pictures and footage from what they did to us. We didn’t make a deal out of it, no so while they slept sound in their beds that horrible morning, we were in a state of shock! Not only did they demolish the World Trade Center(WTC) , but they took two of our own planes to do it in! When we bombed them, by got we did it with our own planes, our bombs and our troops!! They didn’t have the balls to even do that!
Also it wasn’t just the Americans who went over there! They say that we have no god, and no humanity, yet what about theirs. IF they hadn’t started this shit in the first place we wouldn’t be over there finishing it! Don’t start something if you don’t want to finish it, or you don’t like what becomes from the results of your actions. You don’t like what happened to your country; well we didn’t like what you did you ours that beautiful September morning. Don’t mess with a powerhouse if you can’t compete!
I don’t agree with the way it was handled no, but how would you handle something like that, I mean what would you have done if you’ve got a nation behind you who wants revenge on the pain that they caused us! If you do nothing and try to handle it diplomatically you are a coward, while on the other hand if you “bring the rain” you are a tyrant! How can that be? Are we to just sit here and do nothing while those assholes get away with what they did; no that isn’t the American way… When you are young you are taught to stand up for yourself and what you believe in, so what are you going to do if someone comes out of nowhere knocks the crap out of you, are you going to stand there and let them get away with it, no they will do it again. So what do you do, you hit them back, you stand up for yourself and what you think and your person you are! Do you want to be known as a coward or a strong mental person who doesn’t let people walk all over them. We didn’t become number one just because when someone kicked us we stood there, no we kicked back harder than they did till we either as a nation or a single person were the last one standing, that is how it works, always has and always will!
This movie isn’t showing the entire story, it is making the American people out to be the bad person, yah ok I think enough is enough, and we get the picture, poor you. Well that’s just too bad, you don’t like being bombed, hey guess what we didn’t either. Another thing is that the news is the news, you can’t just pick and show what you want, you show everything, and even if it doesn’t show what you think is right. The American people have a right to know what is going on over there, I mean after all we are the ones paying for it, right? So wouldn’t you want to know everything that is going on, not just what the news teams want you to see, to make you think that the Iraqis are bad? I would, I would want to know exactly what my tax dollars are paying for, what my troops, who are not only just American soldiers, but our friends, brothers, husbands, fathers, uncles, grandpas, mothers, daughters, wives, sisters; people who we have known since grade school, or before! They are our family, and the American people!
I understand that you have pride in your own nation, one of which you love with your whole body, and you are going to stand up for what you think is right. You know they say what we did wasn’t right, we shouldn’t have gone into their nation to bomb them without them knowing, but if you remember right they did the same thing to us. They high jacked not one or two or three, no they took four of our commercial airline planes, flew them into our buildings; two went into the WTC, the first plane went into tour1 at 8:45am, it collapsed around 10:30a. The second plane crashed into tour2 around 9:03 and exploded, that tour collapsed around 10:05a. One crashed outside of Philadelphia, PA. that was flight 93, and the fourth went into the Pentagon building in Washington DC. Sorry if I’m not sorry for what we did, but what they did isn’t any worse then what we did only we used our own stuff. I can still remember the state of shock I was in when I was sitting in class and the principal can over the intercom asking all the teachers to turn their tv’s onto CNN News channel that the WTC had just been bombed. We hadn’t had our tv on but 2 minutes on when the second plane crashed into the second building, all I could do was sit there and think, and pray for all those poor peoples and their families. All the while hoping that the sick person behind all of this would someday get what they deserved…

blog 4- Visual Cues

Since November is drawing ever closer, we see more and more commercials of both of the nominees telling us who we should vote for in the presidential elections. There is a lot that you have to pay attention to when you watch them. Sure they have their messages stating their reasons for why they should be president, but there is also visual information that might also be catching your interest. All of these visual cues play a part in the commercial; these visual cues are what I am going to try and interpret in my own words.

As I have been watching these commercials, admittedly they are mostly Barack Obama’s commercials; I have noticed that when they are talking about John McCain’s plans for the country, the lighting gets darker, and the speaker’s voice gets angrier sounding. This is something that will try and get you feeling as they do about senator McCain. They want you to feel that McCain is not the right person for presidency and they want you to feel upset by the thought that a man like McCain would even run for office. Another thing that they do is also show pictures of Senator McCain and President Bush hugging, shaking hands, and/or laughing together. This is trying to instill the thoughts that McCain is just like president Bush. When they show these pictures they usually have white writing across the picture to make the writing stand out. These words are usually about how we don’t want the same thing as President Bush, and how senator Obama would help change this. There was one commercial that did get my attention the most. If you go to barackobama.com and hit the media button; you will see a list of other media related things to the far right. The one that I clicked on was the button for ads. There is one that was really sweet that I liked; it didn’t really state too much about McCain, but it did talk about his family some more. The ad’s title was called “Buster” and it was talking about how his grandfather fought in General Patton’s army, his grandmother worked on a bomber assembly line and how his mother woke him up at 4:30 every morning to go over his lesson with him. It showed pictures of each of them doing something similar to this. He also stated that his grandfather told him that “we are Americans. We can do anything if we put our minds to it.” All of this is trying to show that he is from this country; that he isn’t a terrorist as some people accuse him of; his grandparents and his mother were white middle-class Americans; and that he lived an ordinary American boyhood. All of this is trying to convince the people watching that he is like you and me. Personally I think that the commercials are beautifully done because they do kind of suck you in by their facts, which they do have, and then an uplifting message at the end. It’s like when you have a stressful day at work. everything seems to be going wrong, you’re in a horrible mood and nothing seems to be making it better; then at the end of the day, you get home, see your family, and you know that everything is going to be alright. That is an uplifting feeling, and that is the feeling that he tries to leave with you at the end of his commercials. He is trying to say that he is going to make everything alright. You get this from how the light changes and the sound changes. Everything brightens up when he is on the screen and when he is talking. After watching a lot of Obama commercials this week, these are the visual cues and subtlety that I have seen.

P.S. Vote for Barack Obama Nov. 4th.

Arguing with Respect

My grandmother and I have never been as close as we both would like, and I believe that this was due to the distance between our homes fro so many years. She has always lived up north and I lived in the south, up until three years ago when my family moved here to Crawfordsville.
My grandmother is a wonderful woman! She is very well educated and she is always up for helping others before herself. She had to have that quality in order to be the boss to many nurses at a hospital in Chicago. My grandmother was great at her job and still would be! She got all the nurses what they needed when they needed it! She was the perfect boss!
Many years ago my grandmother retired from her career as a nurse. However, she never left the “boss” side of her at the hospital. She has carried that with her and will continue to do so until the day she dies. That has been the big problem between us for so long. We argue about so many things from the type of milk I drink to the type of vegetables I don’t eat. I have never opened up to her when we were disagreeing and fully told her how I feel. I usually just bite my tongue and walk away. But this time was different; I couldn’t do that during this argument. Maybe it was the pregnancy, maybe not, but whatever it was my feelings came out and I made sure she knew exactly how I felt!
This disagreement we had was about my baby shower coming up next month. She wanted to help with the shower because according to her, the mom-to-be is not supposed to do it. I didn’t care though; I began to plan it months ago only because if I did it I knew it would get done. We got together one day to discuss all the plans I had already made, from the games, to the decorations and the food. Now I think I should tell you that when my grandmother wants to plan something, or have people over, no matter what the occasion she always has to be in charge and do it all herself the way she wants it done.
So back to the day we got together and began discussing my plans. I started with the games and she agreed. “Wow.” I thought, “This may actually be easier than I thought.” I should’ve known because once I mentioned my cake and the fact that I was purchasing it that must have turned her stomach because she blew up and said “I’m not paying that much for a cake when I can get one made for free.” Well we argued for a bit back and forth and I finally told her that the cake was not getting any changes because that is how I wanted it.
That was the first time I had ever opened up and talked to my grandmother that way. I have too much respect for my family to talk to any of them that way, but I don’t know what it was about this time I guess I just couldn’t take the fact that she wanted to take over and change everything. I regret talking to her like that, I feel really bad and I understand that the way she thinks and does things are different and not everyone likes it but we all must deal with it because she is family and we all love her. I have dealt with her being the way she is and I will continue to do so, out of respect and the fact that she is family.
I’m still not sure why I blew up like that and I know it was silly, especially over a cake, but that was the only thing that I spent a lot of time on. I looked for the perfect cake and when I found it, I knew it. We still have a lot of things to do for my baby shower and not much time. One thing that’s marked off the list is the cake because I finally got her to agree to let me take care of it. I knew I would get at least one thing I wanted!

blog 3

Disagreeing with someone that you know very well and respect is really hard mentally and emotionally. You have to think about how your argument is going to sound to them, and you have to be careful not to offend them. The one person that I respect more than anyone else in the world is my father. He has been there for me through everything. He has always been the one I call up if I ever have a problem. There is one thing that he and I have not been able to see eye to eye on; who should be president. I hadn’t realized how much we disagreed until recently, when Barak Obama and John McCain were nominated to run for presidency. I do share a lot of the same feelings towards certain issues. We both believe that the government should butt out of peoples personal lives, lower taxes, and better health care. Unfortunately, I think that Obama will help us achieve some of these goals, and he thinks McCain will achieve these goals.

I think a lot of how my father feels about Obama has a lot to do with the fact that Obama has a Muslim background, and he is half African American. My father was raised in an era where African Americans weren’t treated equally, they still aren’t treated as equally as they should, and I think he does have more prejudice feelings towards them then he lets on. I know for a fact that he doesn’t like Mexican Americans; mostly because he was fired and replaced with Mexican Americans. A lot of this can lead to the resentful feelings that he seems to have towards people of different races; and I think that is why he is voting for McCain. Whenever we talk about the presidency and who we think should win; he completely shuts down and says that Obama is a terrorist and that he loves this country being a democracy and doesn’t want it to become a communist country. My father completely shuts off when it we talk about the presidential candidates. So it makes it hard to even try and discuss the election.