Slice of Life # 24 / 6

  A few days ago, my friend's dog, Ziggy, passed away. Not many things upset me too much but this certainly did. Ziggy was another dog to me and actually saved Roscoe's life. Roscoe along with his brothers and sisters was born in Ziggy's cage. One day, a tom cat came along and tried taking the kittens away, unfortunately one was killed that day by the tom but Ziggy was there to scare him off before he could get away with the rest of them.
  Anyway, I got on Facebook on Wednesday to see my friend's mom post a picture of Ziggy with a caption saying "R.I.P." along with some other things. After I asked her what happened she told me that her nephew who has had a habit with abusing animals, ran him over without feeling any remorse afterwards. Reading those words broke my heart and I felt absolutely terrible for her and her family. Even though Ziggy's no longer with us, I know he's in a better place.

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Slice of Life # 23 / 5

     Last night I over heard my mom talking to my step dad about getting another cat so our current one, Roscoe, would have someone to play with other than our two Silky Terriers, Pookie and Page. While he said no, I still took it upon myself to look online at the cats in shelters and it dawned on me just how many animals are left without a home for whatever reason. Over 3,500 cats within just 100 miles of Anderson are in shelters and it breaks my heart thinking about what it's like for them and what it'd be like if my pets were confined to a metal cage for a majority of the day. Things like that make me want to house tons of animals but then I remember shows like Animal Hoarders and decide I probably shouldn't do that.

Slice of Life # 22 / 4

    I recently read an article where  British lawmaker, Richard Graham, essentially blamed rape victims for what happened to them. He said, 'If you are a young woman on her own trying to walk back home through a park early in the morning in a tight, short skirt and high shoes, and there's a predator . . . if you are blind drunk wearing those clothes how are you to get away? It's not about the impact of your clothes on a potential predator in my view - it's about whether the clothes you're wearing make it harder to get away from a predator.' (Dailymail.co.uk) He later goes on to say that he didn't mean women were "asking for it" but still, that comment was totally unnecessary. Trustee of Rape Crisis England and Wales, Jo Wood, agrees that Graham was blaming the victim rather than the predator and says, "These comments have set us back about 100 years. It doesn't matter if you are off your face and lying naked on a beach - that man takes it upon himself to rape you. This should be about putting the blame back on perpetrators."
     Graham makes it sound as if most rapes occur by strangers in dark alleys whereas, after doing research, that only counts for 9% of the rapes that happen, most rapists are actually well known by the victims. There never is nor ever will be an excuse for taking advantage of someone, especially in such a demeaning and awful way. I simply can't wrap my mind around how someone can be in the mindset that rape is basically fine and dandy and the rapist isn't to blame.

Slice of Life # 21 / 3

     Lately I've been obsessed with the 90's show Freaks and Geeks. It stars James Franco, Seth Rogen, Jason Segal, Martin Starr (Adventureland), and Linda Cardellini (Scooby-Doo.) The show's simply about the lives of normal teenagers as they venture through high school and discover themselves. Linda's character, Lindsay Weir, joins a group of "freaks" and goes from being known as a good girl to being a burnout, whereas her brother, Sam (played by John Francis Daley), couldn't be closer to being a geek. The characters in the show are extremely relatable, unlike many of the shows nowadays where they portray high school to be a magical place where nothing bad or awkward ever happens. Unfortunately, the show was canceled after just one fantastic season but it will always be one of my favorites.

Slice of Life # 20 / 2

    Not often do you stumble upon such a strange commercial that you question everything you once believed in. However, this commercial for Little Baby's Ice Cream has probably changed the way I see ice cream commercials in that I'll never see a better advertisement for frozen milk. After seeing these, I wondered if this was even real seeing as though I've never seen these ads on t.v. nor seeing the ice cream in stores, however it is! Also after viewing these lovely videos and finding out they were real, I thought that this had to be some weird foreign treat because I pictured it to be too weird for Americans but boy was I wrong; it comes from Philly! Oh, the things you'll see on the internet.

Slice of Life #19 / 1

Cut for Bieber?

     Does this mass amount of ignorance even need to be posted? Well, if you have yet to hear about the "cut for Bieber" thing, it all started because of some pictures of Justin Bieber smoking marijuana and eventually the troll-some users of 4chan took these pictures and posted them on twitter along with pictures of themselves cutting their wrists with the hashtag: #cut4bieber. Since then, many prepubescent girls have been cutting their wrists thinking that because of this they'll get Justin Bieber to stop going down this road of self destruction. I can't even decide which I think is dumber, the fact that these little girls have this idealistic view of a celebrity or that they're actually cutting themselves because of a "joke" that started on a website that fouses on upsetting any and everyone.
   

Below is a video from Tristan Barker (my hero) about his views on the subject.

Slice of Life #18

     With the idea that it's people killing people rather than guns killing people, I'd like to bring up a name no one probably knows: Timothy McVeigh. In 1995, this 27 year-old man walked away from the Alfred P. Murrah Building and set off a 4000-pound bomb. He claimed to have done it in order to save the constitution. This man killed  168 innocent people and 19 of them were children under six. Why is it that we can still go out and buy materials used in bombs and yet we try to outlaw guns? 

 
   With the recent school shooting in Connecticut, gun control laws have been a huge topic of conversation. Personally, I think outlawing guns is unbelievably ignorant. Guns don't kill people, people kill people. Cars aren't outlawed and yet 3,000 people die daily because of those. Tobacco isn't outlawed and it kills daily as well. Besides, I think that if someone was going to kill people, a gun control law wouldn't stop them.

Slice of Life #17

What Can Happen In A Second:

1. The difference between perfect toast and charcoal

2. A smile

3. Catching someone's eye

4. The changing of someone's mind

5. A lifetime of regret

6. Making a life altering decision

7. Falling over your own feet

8. Hiccuping

Slice of Life #15

     This last week has been probably the most eventful week I've had in a very long time. It started off on Thanksgiving when my cat, Roscoe, ran away from home when my brother was letting our dogs out to go to the bathroom. I didn't even know he was missing until I got home from Black Friday shopping at 4 the next morning. On top of that, Sunday I came down with the flu and still hadn't seen Roscoe. I got over the flu and life became normal once again, or at least as normal as it could get without my cat. That all changed though a couple hours ago when my family and I were at my brother's basketball game and we got a call from our neighbor saying that Roscoe has been living in her attic for the past few days. I could hardly contain my excitement when I found out and we rushed home as soon as we got the news. At the beginning of the week, I wasn't too thrilled in the slightest but now that it's lighting up, it's not too shabby.

Slice of Life #14

   No matter what you're talking about, time is essential. Whether it's what day and time you're going to this concert or when you plan on doing that homework assignment you were given 3 weeks to do. Time is always the big factor. It seems as if we always have too many things to do and not enough hours in the day to do them, and we're always counting down the days until something, whether that be Christmas or summer vacation. We're so worried about what's happening later on in life we don't stop and contemplate what's going on now.

Slice of Life #13

 Lately I feel as though recording studios will produce literally anything. Personally, I am no a fan of rap because I believe anyone who can speak quickly, such as auctioneers, can be a rap superstar. First of all, this genre doesn't include any instruments, rather computer generated sounds and quite a few "artists" use autotune. Secondly,  the lyrics lack quality and make no sense. Here's just a few examples: "Thirty -eight revolve like the sun round the Earth," (Jay-Z, "It's Hot"), "Never let me slip, cause if I slip, then I'm slippin," (Dr. Dre, "Nuthin' But a 'G' Thang"), and of course "I'm hungry for cheese like Hungry, Hungry Hippo," (Project Pat, "Ballers"). I wish more songs could have deep, meaningful lyrics like, "To die by your side is such a heavenly way to die," (The Smiths, "There's a Light That Never Goes Out) or "On the day that you were born the angels got together, And decided to create a dream come true, So they sprinkled moon dust in your hair, Of golden starlight in your eyes of blue," (The Carpenters, "Close to You".) I didn't intentionally choose love songs for the last two examples, I just thought that they showed how today's music lacks sustenance. I hope that one day we can go back to the heartfelt lyrics created by The Smiths, Carpenters and smiliar artists.

Slice of Life #12

 "You know, it's funny what a young man recollects," Forrest Gump said that and it's undeniably true. Like Forrest, I don't remember being born, or recall what I got for my first Christmas nor do I remember when I went on my first outdoor picnic. I do remember the little things, like when my uncle Shawn pushed me face first into cow manure and I had to sit in the cows' drinking trough. I also remember these little Hello Panda cookies I would eat when I lived in Japan. It's the small things that don't really place a dramatic impact on your life that you can remember, like having a pretend cooking show with your best friend or trying to get the attention of the boys who lived across the street from her by singing and dancing obnoxiously outside. I wonder, thirty years from now, what I'll be remembering from my days as a high school student, or if I'll remember any of it at all.

Slice of Life #11

Amanda Todd = The New Kony 2012?

  
   Although this is out of date now, over break I decided that as soon as we got back to school this was going to be my first slice topic. Only 7 months ago, the invisiblechildreninc came out with a video encouraging people to stand up for the children in Africa being taken into an army led by Joseph Kony and forced to murder their parents. This video told the world that it was their job to get involved and make a difference, however, when the date came when everyone was expected to cover their town in flyers announcing that Mr. Kony would soon be found and put to an end, everyone had already forgotten about it. That was the first thing I thought of when I logged onto Facebook to see a picture of a 15 year old, Amanda Todd.
   I would like to state that, while yes it's a sad story, I don't pity her. Amanda was a girl with very low self esteem. She was willing to show a multitude of men on the Internet herself nude. She was bullied because she had no respect for herself whatsoever and then she was only beaten up because of her promiscuous behavior with another girl's boyfriend. She later went on to drink bleach and claim she was subjected to cyberbullying when other children on Facebook would tag her in pictures of bleach. I would love to know why she simply didn't delete her account if it was getting to be that bad. And where were her parents? Don't you think you'd be watching her like a hawk if she was your daughter and attempted suicide and was being bullied at school? Her parents did nothing but feed the problem by moving her to a new school rather than addressing the the situation and seeking out the authorities.
   Everyone is saying how anyone who was thinking with their brain rather than their heart is nothing more than a bully and I have seen multiple instances where people standing up for Amanda were in fact bullying those who simply stated that if she would've had a little more respect for herself and not have shown multiple men her body then none of this would have ever happened. I was one of those instances. But now, only one week later, you rarely see anything showing up on social networking sites about the young Canadian girl. She faded away, just like Kony 2012.

Slice of Life #10

 I've never been one to cry because of a movie but there are just some that have the ability to make me burst into tears with little effort. For example, the movie Harold and Maude. It was a movie made in 1971 about a young man named Harold who has this obsession with death and always put himself in these fake suicide setups. Then one day he goes to a funeral of a man he doesn't know and ends up meeting a 79 year old woman by the name of Maude who's high on life. At first, Harold doesn't know what to think of the strange woman but begins seeing her on a regular basis after that day. Harold's mother knows that he's "special" and starts setting him up with various women on a dating base. After she sees that he shows no interest in any of them she begins to give up and ship him out with his uncle in the military. Neither Harold nor Maude want to see him go, so they work up a plan to keep him from being able to join. The movie follows them as they go through many adventures and find true love and how it knows no boundaries. Also, this movie showed me the amazing music artist Cat Stevens. The soundtrack actually is only made up of his songs which may seem strange, but I truly believe that only an artist such as he would've been able to pull off such a thing considering all the diverse stylings he does. And even though this is a movie talk and not a book talk, I would still give it a 10/10 on my scale.

                                                                      
                                                            Trouble by Cat Stevens

Slice of Life #9

  So my birthday was yesterday and for the most part it wasn't too shabby! My friend Danielle from Illinois was even sweet enough to send me balloons and a card saying, "I flooping love you. You've been my best friend forever and I'm so glad that you were born on this day 16 years ago. Gawsh I miss you. Love Smashhedo." I actually teared up when I read that! I am so excited that I get to go paint balling with her and some other friends this weekend! This will be my first BIG birthday party, I've only had one "party" before and that was last year with my friend Heather and we had a conjoined party because our birthdays are only a week apart and it was only us and her cousin and his friend and we went laser tagging. Anyhow, overall I'd have to say that this was a very pleasant 16th birthday!

Slice of Life #8

 This week is going to be amazing. First, The Perks of Being a Wallflower comes out in theaters this weekend and I can hardly contain myself! I've been waiting for the movie to come out for TWO years!! Then, next Tuesday is my 16th birthday, and while I'm not quite getting a car I will be applying to just about everywhere. And for my "party", I'm going back to Illinois for the weekend and paintballing with my friends which I'm also super syked for considering I've never gone.  Ugh, I'm just so excited for the next couple of weeks! Then homecoming obviously. This Friday will be a super hectic one for many people I think but it'll still hopefully be a blast!

Slice of Life #7

I love music more than most things in the world. It makes me so extremely happy to know that I've been able to show people new bands. This feeling has been brought on by my recent activity on Yahoo Answers. This one girl was looking for new music to play at the graduation party she was already planning. She also added some bands that she was a fan of (Phoenix, MGMT, Sublime, and Of Monsters and Men), I love these bands too so I thought it'd be fun to help her out and share my knowlege with her. I showed her a ton of new music and she LOVED them! It was a feeling of satisfation that I haven't had in quite a while. When she thanked me, she didn't say what she liked best other than," I am officially in love with Passion Pit now." Here's a few of the songs I showed her so you can get a feel for what I assume will be at her party!

Slice of Life #6

 I love many different cartoons but my current favorite would probably be Regular Show on cartoon network. It's a very simple show about a raccoon named Rigby and a blue jay named Mordecai and all of their many shenanigans. Mordecai is the rather responsible one in the sense that he usually regrets what they did or wishes that they would've just done their job as park monitors instead of goofing off, whereas Rigby doesn't have many regrets throughout the series and thinks about what's going on in the moment and tends to react more on feelings than actual logic. I think the show is pretty relateable in the sense that they start off with a situation just like any of us could have, however they solve their problems quite a bit differently than most of us probably do. In the clip I've posted, Mordecai and Rigby are wrestling a doll when Rigby slams into the wall and has to fix it before their short fused boss,Benson, finds out what happened. They go on to use a keyboard that Rigby stole from a wizard named The Power to get and do whatever they want. This eventually gets them into more trouble when their friend Skips suspects them of wrong doing and they accidentally send him to outer space. They manage to send themselves to the moon but unfortunately the batteries in their keyboard die and they're forced to escape an evil monster. Of course they barely escape the monster by using a special technique and hot wiring the keyboard with wires from the golf cart they used to get themselves to the moon. When they get back home, Benson doesn't notice they hole in the wall because the entire house gets destroyed by the impact of them crashing into it. Even though he didn't see the hole, Benson gave Skips the keyboard which he then destroyed.  The show is very fun and entertaining for people of all ages and one of the better shows on Cartoon Network nowadays I believe.

Slice of Life #5

Danielle and I with our face masks..

Jacob in his baseball uniform.

 I'm so excited for this weekend! I get to go to King's Island with my family and friend, Danielle. I've never been there and neither has Danielle so that' will be a new experience for us because the rest of my family went last year. Friday I get to miss school in order to drive to Illinois to pick her and my brother, Jacob up. I'm really looking forward to being able to ride rides with a friend that I haven't seen in over a month! I think the rides I'm most looking forward to are the Diamondback and Drop Tower. We'll only be staying for the day but I think that'd be enough thrills and excitement to hold me over until the next time I'm able to go.

Slice of Life #4

I really hope to be more like my mom when i grow up. She inspires me to be more outspoken and care less about what other think of me. For example, the other night I was watching my brother's football game with my family and my friend Bradley and his parents because his brother was also on Matthew's team, and my mom saw a rather robust and elderly woman who threw her garbage on the ground so she called her out on it.
 "Excuse me, the ground's not a trash can," my mom told the woman wearing a white hat with words like "FAITH" and "LOVE" and "PRAISE".
 "Well if you care so much about that lid you can go pick it up yourself," the woman snootily replied.
 I couldn't quite hear what my mother said in response other than something about the woman's hat. This remark caused my step dad to tell my mother she was done and it was time for her to go to the car. For the moment everything was calm... that is until the game ended with our team winning further upsetting the woman. At this time my mom was completely over the lid thing and hadn't even expected what she said to the woman to cause such an up roar, however the woman wasn't finished.
 "If you still care about that lid you can go get it," She yelled at my family as we were leaving the stands.
 "Okay, I still love your hat," was what my mom had to say back to her.
 That's when the woman told my mom to "shut up" which caused Ricky, my step dad, to turn around and tell the woman she was fat and that he too was fond of her hat. That's when she chose to tell him some very choice words. I wasn't able to hear the rest of what happened because Bradley and I had chose to leave the situation and not look back.
 While that wasn't the choice situation to be in at the time, it's a prime example of why I love my mom as much as I do, she's not afraid to call you out when you're wrong. This doesn't go with just strangers either, she'll do it with me, my brothers and Ricky as well. But even if I get embarrassed while in the moment I want to be like her and not care about the consequences of calling someone out who's in the wrong.