EXTRA CREDIT (Without a Cell Phone) PART 2 of 3

Being for without a cell phone for some for just a few minutes is nerve racking. Now imagine not having one for 3 weeks! It is ridiculous. A week into not having my cell phone i almost began to shut down. Not having a phone for 3 weeks was one of the hardest things i have ever had to adapt to. A MAJOR problem that i noticed that had arose was the communication between family members. I am no mamma's boy by any means but my parents do like to keep in contact with me while i am at school. My family and i are very close and are open about everything. The week that i lost my phone was also the week that i needed to pay for my car insurance. I have a reminder on my cell phone that goes off a day before i need to pay my insurance every 6 months. I write my parents a check and they cash it and send the money off to the insurance company. Now not having a phone really messed things up for me. My reminder did not go off because i didnt have a phone. I forgot all about paying for the Insurance. My parents tried calling me wondering where the money was but they had no idea i had lost my phone. My parents began to get a annoyed because they didnt want to have a late payment to the Ins. Company. 1 week after the payment date i suddenly remembered that i needed to pay so i wrote a check and mailed it off.

Whilst not having a cell phone i resorted to using my friends phones to contact my parents/friends. I have a lot of friends here at ship so that means a lot of different cell phone numbers. I would call my parents from one phone then 10 minutes later call them from a different phone and so on day after day week after week. Doing this confused my parents so not only did not having a cell phone affect me it also affected the people around me. The funniest thing about this situation was that when my parents needed to contact me about Doctor visits etc they would call and text my friends phones. It seemed like every time my parents called my friends phones i was NEVER around them. So there my friends are running around trying to give me messages from my parents. Sometimes i wouldn't get a message until about 5 days after my parents left the message. So as you can see things were VERY unorganized. Now some of you may ask, "why didn't you just email your parents?" Well my parents are very technologically inclined and dot even know how to send an email so instead of fussing with that i just avoided it. To prove my point i actually did send my mother 1 email and to which this day have still not gotten a reply. In my post regarding week one i started going a little bit crazy, not knowing what to do. Week 2 was easier for me. I began to accept the fact that i would not have a phone for while. Again, some of you may ask "Why didn't you just got out and buy another phone?" Well the simplest answer i can give is... I am BROKE!

Finally accepting the reality that i would be out of commission for a while i noticed that i began to sit in my room alot more. I am rarely in my room and being phone less almost was like i locked myself in my room. I sat in my room alot because i started using the infamous Facebook as a cellular replacement. Facebook did prove to be very effective through the day time but towards the night it didn't work. By this i mean that most of my friends are on facebook throughout the day so it was easy for me to catch them and see what was going on for the day. My friends like to party a lot so therefore NONE of them are on facebook at night so it was hard to find out what they were doing at night because none of them were on facebook. While sitting around my room i began to notice that it was cleaner than ever. When i would get bored in my room i would clean. I would vacuum, dust, and make my bed. This was obviously a good thing. Being out of contact with friends also made me go to the CUB more often. I would go to the CUB, get food then head straight back to my room to eat it. Now one would think that if you were sitting in your room all day you would do more homework. For me i think that i did absolutely zero homework. The television, video games, and facebook became a huge distraction. It was kind of like i was drunk off of laziness.

I may seem like i was acting like it was the end of the world for me, not having a phone but it really kind of was... Despite, the clean room, incomplete homework, late Insurance payments and terrible communication I reluctantly survived week 2. [Week 3 (final week) to come]

EXTRA CREDIT (Without a Cell Phone) PART 1

As some of you may have known i have been and are still without a cell phone. It all started off when I was leaving a friend of mines house over on College Park the night of the terrible blizzard. I was walking down the steps and took a nasty spill. I slipped and fell off over the railing into a HUGE snow drift. It was dark out, snow in my eyes, I just couldn't see. I began searching for it frantically but then quickly realized that;I couldn't find it. Thrashing through the snow, it was nowhere to be seen. Even after several later attempts to find it with a metal detector. It was still lost in the mist. The Story of the Lost Cell phone, was sure to have an ending that would stun us all. Seconds began to pass, then minutes, then hours, and then even days. I lost touch of all of my friends. I never knew when to eat with them or go out with them anywhere. I was slowly being "shut out" from the cellular world. What to do what to do? I don't have a cell phone what do i do? It was like Dr. Seuss was in my head, the world almost spinning. Boredom set in from the lack of communications, i began watching t.v. more often and definitely sitting around more often. It was like I was high off a technological marijuana joint. I was slowly slipping out of reality and into the a cold, manipulative Cell Phone terror mania. Panick began to set in quickly, i felt as if my very own cell phones was taking my friends away. Days of not having a phone starts to reek havoc. Am i going crazy? [Stay Tuned for PART 2]

FEED. Close to a WiFi Fead world?

Once in a while a book comes along that is so important, so defining of our time, that nobody reads it. This may be that book. This is our very possible future and it is terrifying as well as avoidable... While I did end up liking this book, this book is one that I found hard to get into, the beginning is slow and slightly tedious with all of the slang and the "Like, totally, man" quality of the narrators speech, it was not until about page 50 that I really started getting into it. Reading this book with all of the "Likes'" in it etc made me feel like I was in a classroom with the girl or guy that is like well like, i did not like even know like, how like the world like, like, like. It drives me crazy when people say like every 2 seconds and in reading this book it felt like i was hearing it just like that. It seemed at times that the author was trying too hard to get his point across/to me the whole time saying things like "Know what I mean? Huh? Do ya get it, do ya?" which got tiring very fast. The plot of the book seemed like any other futuristic story line. The whole "there is a chip in my head mind controlling scenario has been done plenty of times." Like in George Orwell's 1984 there was not direct mind control but in a way there was. The government could read your thoughts etc. So to me it was kind of like feed but feed is more futuristic. So all in all i really did not find the story line that original. I did like how Titus met Violet on the moon and she sort of opened a new light to him. I thought Violets character was portrayed very well. Some of the ideas in the book were also kind of cool. For example when Violet and Titus where at the club on the moon and the one guy came in and started hitting everyone on the head with a "virus" stick. I thought that was sort of original that being hit by this thing caused your feed chip to malfunction. In the end I did slowly begin liking the book more and more.

As I digress I ask a simple question. "Do you think that our world may some day be run by a sort of feed chip?"

The dumbest Generation? Excuse me...

Think for a second. Humans evolve, we change, we alter our minds, and we adjust to changes. In regards to the video of Dr. Bauerlein that we watched in class he says that todays generation of people are the "dumbest generation." Dr. Bauerlein and his ideas regarding the "dumbest generation" are to me false, I do not exactly agree with his opinion. He goes on and on about how old knowledge is being forgotten. Isn't that just a part of life? I mean what i said before, humans evolve. How can you expect someone from 2010 to be able to be a history major on what happened in the time of 1650? In my opinion you cant. What i am getting at is how can he say that just because somebody has never heard of Moby dick that they are dumb? I guarantee if i asked Dr. Bauerlein about rap music, the latest gadgets, or what club i should go to in Philladelphia he wouldn't know what to say. How can he expect people of the new generation to know what the Old man and the Sea is? To some people that stuff is not important. To people like Dr. Bauerlein, Mozart, Moby dick, The old man and the Sea, Beethoven are all important things. Dr. Bauerlein does not see a positive side in today's youth. To him rap music is just loud obnoxious noise. Just because he doesn't like Ludicrous doesn't mean everyone else does. As time goes by new things become more special and some lose importance. Ludacris is one of the wealthiest rap artists out there. In his song "Big A$$ house" his second verse is as follows...

"I got the biggest house that you seen thus far, *yeah*
Twenty-two acres and it fit a hundred cars.
Five million dollars, I bought it straight cash,
and my fat bank account is out of your weight class."

This song that he wrote is about his life. At the time he wrote that song he did have a $5 million house and he did buy it with cash. He also does have just over 100 different cars which range from a quarter of a million dollars to 1.5 million. Now he lives in an even bigger more expensive house thats somewhere in the neighborhood of $35 million. So in 100 years i don't think that Ludacris will be forgot. He is one of the greatest rappers out there. His work 100 years from now will still be looked upon and listened to just how Beethoven and Mozart are still listened to this day. So for Dr. Bauerlein to not think that rap music is important is naive. Ludacris has his own foundation where he donates millions of dollars to help kids with disabilities. So other than being a rapper hes helping people. This is something that will not be forgotten in society.

Now let me get off my rant regarding Ludacris. I just cant fathom how Dr. Bauerlein thinks that today's generation is dumb. All the question that were asked by Jay Leno in the video i knew the answers to but just becuase the people in the video didn't doesn't make them dumb. I didn't know what the Dead Sea Scrolls were until about 3 weeks ago. Am i the dumbest generation? According to Dr. Bauerlein i am but i know that i am smart. I mean i made it this far in college/life so i must have some common sense.

All in all how can we be expected to remember information that happened 200 years ago. What happened 200 years ago doesn't exactly affect how i carry out my day. Yea what happened 200 years ago shaped today's world but how do you know that what is happening nowadays wont shape the world 200 years from now?

Americas Image

The video that we watched in class, Killing us Softly 3 Advertising's Image of Women regarded an undoubted issue of how the media portrays women in a uncanny way. In the video Jean Killbourne elaborates how the advertising industry in 1979 grew from a $20 billion a year Industry to a $180 billion industry in 1999. There is no doubt that advertising is a key player in Americans Economic and Socioeconomic time line but there is doubt on what all of this mass advertising is doing to peoples self images and how they see themselves in this expanding world.. The average American is exposed to over three thousand advertisement each day which means that the average American will spend 3 solid years of his or her life watching television commercials. Americans are litterally fed image upon image of mass advertisements. Whether its an advertisement on a city bus, a billboard, a television, a movie, or over the radio these ads are everywhere. As said in the video, advertising promotes normalcy and due to this there is a constant need for people to feel that they need to be socially accepted among everyone. 40 percent of adults in American are obese. With that said take in to account of all of the ads you see that promote healthy living, slender figures, and beach body's. The media in a sense tells us who we need to be or what we need to look like in order to be considered normal in this current day and age. I agree with what Jeanne Killbourne is saying in that the media has a growing expecatation of what women "should" look like in order to be considered normal. I do believe that this is wrong. There are so many ads out there that tell women that they need to be skinny, have large breasts, and ultimately be considered an object rather than a human being. Instilling this false image upon women at an early age just sets them up for problems. When young girls see these images of beautiful skinny women on the beach or whatever they may be, they feel as if they need to look like that in order to be socially accepted. Advertising tells women how they should be. Advertising surrounds women with the image of ideal beauty so that women learn from an early age how important it is for a women to be beautiful. Women learn that they need to spend mass amounts of money in order to achieve this "so called" ideal beauty. Ideal beauty is inevitably false and non achievable because the ideal image of what a women should be is flawless and it is impossible to achieve this. I think that the false image of women that is being bestowed upon young girls is a terrible thing that alters how people think and thus brainwashes them in to thinking that they must be perfect in order to be liked.

In relation to men. Obviously there are advertisements out there that picture the ideal man but being a male myself I personally do not think that men strive as hard as women to become this ideal image. I personally do not care what i look like or how i dress or let alone what people think about me. I think that i have a terrible sense of style and have learned to accept this. I wear basketball shorts, sweatpants, and a sweatshirt almost everyday and never really think twice about how i look. I wake up, roll out of bed and stagger off to class. Some girls on the other hand have to make sure that their clothes and hair are perfect before they even consider leaving their room! I believe that this is primarily because of the media and their false representation and expectation of what a women "should" be. I cant say that i have ever met a guy that spent 1 hour getting ready go out to a party or asked me if i thought he looked fat in his new t shirt. The issue of how the media is in a way controlling what the ideal women should like is a bad thing and it is up to people like me and you to stray from this ideal image and be ourselves. I ask to you "Is there a way of fixing this problem? If so how or what do you suggest?