Just a Little Life Song

Fleeing the American Dream

2010-07-22T10:10:00.001-07:00

Ronald Jenkees.

2010-04-22T13:30:00.000-07:00

This is one of the best remixes I've ever heard or, much less, seen.

Lasse Gjertsen. For Some Reason, This Never Gets Old.

2010-04-22T13:29:00.001-07:00

Lasse Gjertsen - Amateur
Uploaded by Youpinadi. - Arts and animation videos.

This Isn't What We Had in Mind When We Chanted the Words, "Yes We Can"

2009-09-10T09:22:00.000-07:00

It's really too bad that many of the people who are elected into congress are people who clearly lack and most important qualities that a political leader should possess. This isn't a Democrat or Republican issue; it's an issue about respect. Never once, during George W. Bush's reign of stupidity and mistakes, did a member of congress heckle our nation's President during a speech. Last night, when President Obama tried speaking to both sides of congress, it became clear that some members of congress simply shouldn't be. Yelling out that the President is a liar and wearing signs of protest around their person is not a way for a government leader to behave on Capitol Hill. These men belong out on the streets with the rest of the protesters. This overt disrespect shown to the President bastardizes our entire system of government, and should result in whatever the D.C. equivalent is of a black list.

A Thought On My Chosen Profession

2009-09-09T22:07:00.000-07:00

Teaching is changing in front of our eyes. During a time in which vast amounts of free information can be exchanged instantly around the world, the U.S. still struggles to raise literacy rates in its schools. This doesn’t seem right, and it’s clear that the educational system is undergoing a massive overhaul in standards, expectations and accountability. As I enter into the profession, I am drilled with information about the change of demographics, the complexities and different types of learners, and the seemingly endless list of standards that are expected to be met. I consider this, and realize that much like my career, education itself, since the dawn of education, has gone through a long- and i suppose infinite -journey towards what is the perfect formula for educational success. It's a little scary to think about my carrer as an endless journey, but i suppose that's why I want to teach in the first place. I'd rather live in the mystery than to live in the know.

Pretty Basic

2009-09-04T20:19:00.000-07:00

This Cartoon Pretty Much Sums it Up

2009-09-02T23:19:00.000-07:00

Ten Commandments for the Twenty First Century

2009-09-02T22:19:00.001-07:00

In his latest book, The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins presents his own Alternative Ten Commandments. I enjoyed the list so much I wanted to share it here. [Edit: it has been pointed out that this list was not written by Dawkins, but only offered in his book. Whoever wrote it, I think it is a great list of principles.]

1. Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you

2. In all things, strive to cause no harm

3. Treat your fellow human beings, your fellow living things, and the world in general with love, honesty, faithfulness and respect.

4. Do not overlook evil or shrink from administering justice, but always be ready to forgive wrongdoing freely admitted and honestly regretted.

5. Live life with a sense of joy and wonder

6. Always seek to be learning something new

7. Test all things; always check your ideas against the facts, and be ready to discard even a cherished belief if it does not conform to them.

8. Never seek to censor or cut yourself off from dissent; always respect the right of others to disagree with you.

9. Form independent opinions on the basis of your own reason and experience; do not allow yourself to be led blindly by others.

10. Question everything

Being Loud & Being Wrong

2009-08-27T20:53:00.000-07:00

I need a new moleskin, and I haven't written anything in this for awhile. What the hell, right?

I talk too much. At times, my inner monologue is next to non existent. I suppose I've always been this way. I'm pretty vocal about things, I enjoy debate, and I oftentimes speak before thinking. Most people are guilty of the same things, so I am comfortable in the resolution that, on a good day, my diarrhea of the mouth is luckily passable by the standards of modern society. For example: when I am in class, I like to ask questions. I ask questions to accommodate a few of my many needs. One of those needs is obviously the need to learn. Another need is the need to understand. Another need, though, is the need for action. If I am not intellectually stimulated, then I will daydream, fidgit, and doodle in my notebook. Plain and simple: I learn through motion. Many people are like me, but a small percentage of those people take class participation to the extent that I sometimes do. People like me are more commonly frowned upon by their classmates for our dictatorial presence in class. We tend to monopolize class time with our own questions, we feel the need to include our two cents in every conversation, and we oftentimes bring pointless personal anecdotes into otherwise productive class discussions. I know it's annoying, and I am sorry. At the end of the day, though, my needs, like most people's, are usually going to outweigh the needs of others. I know that sounds selfish, but the malady of which I speak is more or less involuntary. For the same reason mean people are inherently mean, and for the same reason my cat instinctively begs for food even on a full stomache, people like me are going to piss a few people off by being annoying. It is, quite simply, a part of our nature. We cannot do anything about it. For us, sitting still and shutting up is just too painful to stand.

I write this because I do not want people to go on assuming that I think I know everything. In fact, I'm really wrong more times than I'm not. Being wrong can be really beneficial, though. When I'm wrong, people usually catch me on it. They then tell me why I'm wrong, which allows me the opportunity to look at something with a different perspective (I stress the word opportunity, mind you, because although people may be offered another viewpoint, this does not mean they take that opportunity. Now that I think of it, this thought actually touches on the bane of our world's existence.... but I digress). I don't always make the most of those opportunities, but I often feel better about myself when I do. Therefore, by acknowledging to myself and to you that I realize that I am not always going to be right, and by admitting that I even like to be wrong at times, I reason it to be only moderately selfish to, in advance, spare myself the foregone humiliation of being so.

The Beast That Swallows Its Young

2009-04-06T22:37:00.000-07:00

The Beast That Swallows Its Young from Matt Kresling on Vimeo.

I just received the promissory note for my second student loan. The loan is meant to pay for the first semester of my graduate school to become a high school teacher. The one preexisting loan I have from my undergraduate career, about 2,500 dollars, is the foundation of what's probably going to amount to about 25,000 dollars worth of student loans.

I'm getting off light.

I was fortunate in an unfortunate situation. When my mother died, I was left an inheritance that was meant solely for the purpose of paying for my higher education. Refusing to allow her single-parent status from taking away the possibility of a better future for my sister and I, my mother made paying for college the most important thing in life. The amount she left us was enough to put my sister through Xavier University in Cincinnati, and myself through Fordham in New York City. My mother's dedication to her work is what allowed me to be able to go to college and give myself a chance at giving my children an even better life that I have.... or so it's supposed to go, I guess.

Then the well... it went dry. No more inheritance. Bye bye. Four years at a University, a car, studying abroad and an all expenses paid tour of Europe. It was all paid for by my mother's inheritance. I've used a slew of justifying reasons why it was okay for me to spend it rather than save it, but there's always been that other part of me that knows that I'm terrible with money. Having it was great. Didn't really have to work. Didn't worry about it. Just called up the bank when the money ran out, gave 'em some bullshit reason for why I needed it, and then spent it on something completely different. I had no one telling me what to do, and I knew it. I figured I had enough to get me to through college. Go through four years at a Jesuit University, and come out on the other debt free on the other side? Are you kidding? And so it started. No work ethic.

I have a friend that so pointedly said to me right around the time of graduation, "You could get a drunk monkey through undergrad". She's right. The system of higher education really doesn't make it difficult for people to get a degree. This has caused the market to become flooded with millions of "bachelor" students with the same degree fighting for a limited number of jobs. The parity is suffocating. Wages go down because we're all replaceable, and as a result, it takes people ten years just to earn enough to cancel out what they spent on their seemingly useless undergraduate degree.

Graduate school, though, is a different story. See, when you decide to go to graduate school, you're telling employers that you're really committed. You dedicate just a couple more years to hone the skills you want to offer employers, and the employees reward you by paying you more money to pay off school even faster. It all seems really great, right?

As a prospective teacher, I'm not supposed to gripe about the educational system. I'm supposed to tell all my students how great and important college is supposed to be, which I truly believe it is. However, in the age we live in, it has become impossible t teach each other. We do a good enough job at failing to teach ourselves, but when it comes to educating our children, in a world where two thirds of the technology that they learn today will become obsolete in two years, we are failing.

I'm joining the teaching profession already understanding that I will be fighting in a losing battle. I'm not a defeatist. I'm a realist. I believe that, when used correctly, America's concept of an "educational system" actually works. It's designed to accelerate learning, and when students apply themselves and teachers do their jobs, practical and theoretical progress is made. The problem is the lack of family structure in the country. Education, whether it's obsolete or unattainable, simply isn't considered to be very important in a lot of areas in the country. When families are broken, pressure gets put on on young people to fend for themselves, and it puts pressure on teachers to compensate for that lack of home support. Meanwhile, society will accept nothing less than No Child Left Behind. Teachers fight in a losing battle: constant pressure from above with no support from below.

So we know that we can't blame the kids. We can't really blame the teachers because they're not the ones making the decisions. I supposed we could blame the administrators, but that would cost us our jobs... how about Washington. Yes, it's Obama's fault. Or how about we do everyone's favorite by copping out and blaming "parents". Personally, I'm not in the blaming business. The failure of America's educational system is symptomatic of democracy and humankind. All there's left to do is handle education the way we feel is best... sort of like changing the tires on a totaled car and sell it for half the retail value. I'm gonna be a warrior in an endless battle. I'm gonna be a teacher.

My reasons for teacher are far reaching and too extensive to add to an already ranting spiel about education. I don't really know if I've come to any conclusion about my own beliefs regarding education. I'm twenty three, so my beliefs are naturally limited. I believe that an education is important, but I don't believe it's everything, and I certainly don't believe it's the only thing. Lots of smart people can learn everything they need to know without needing instruction; they're called "enlightened". For the rest of us, we are left to our own devices. The system can be better. I know it can. I just can't come up with any answers at the moment.

Frost Nixon Interview,

2009-03-04T15:09:00.000-08:00

I didn't know much about The Watergate Scandal before watching the 2009 film. After watching the film, I went ahead and saw this version. Aside from the acting being proven spot-on, the telling close-ups of Nixon were even more compelling... chilling. Looking at his eyes while Frost quotes line after line of incriminating evidence. The interview is the unofficial admittance of wrongdoing on behalf of Nixon. His humanity came out in his confessions. I have so much to say, but I think it'd be best for people to just watch the interview in its entirety. A true landmark of investigatory journalism.

"It Is Time."

2009-02-24T21:33:00.000-08:00

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Barack Obama's address to the United States Congress on 2.24.09.

There is hope in this message. For the first time in my young adult life, I can fit my head around a solution to the problems that my country faces. Tears of hope and joy came to my eyes at so many points during this speech. As a teacher in training, it gave me a sense of excitement and anticipation to get started in improving the education for children in this country. My mind is racing with the possibility that this country, along with the world that looks up to us, will once again flourish.

Growing Wings in Cyprus - 2006

2008-12-29T21:45:00.000-08:00

2008-12-10T12:55:00.000-08:00

Racism in the Elevator

2008-12-04T16:47:00.000-08:00

funny, yes, but true. and sad.

Let's face it: in 2008, racism is still very much alive in our country. While we may have taken a step forward with the recent presidential election, look at the distribution (or lack thereof) of wealth in this country. As a result of generations of white-dominated governmental policies, predominantly black communities are being cast further and further away from the high reaches of the economic spectrum. The percentage of children in the Bronx public school system who go all the way through to graduate is staggering: barely 27. That's less than 3 out of every ten kids making it just through high school. While that's a jagged pill to swallow, it's no wonder when you stop to look at the factors that could and oftentimes do coerce them out of the classrooms.

In my time as a mentor in the Bronx, I had the privilege to get to know some of the brightest kids I've ever met by being a mentor with Morris Academy Mentors. Kids from all over New York City spent their Saturday mornings with us because they knew they wanted more than just what their school system could give them. They were intelligent, charismatic, funny, and especially in tune with the nature of their environment in relation to the rest of the country's. Together, we spoke of hopes, dreams, their lives, and of the world as we all saw it.

It was the Saturday after Super Tuesday, 2008 for the U.S. democratic primary race. We broke off into smaller groups to discuss our political views during a time of political headwinds. Keeping in mind that none of these kids were old enough to vote, I began my small-group discussion by asking these young adults, in their eyes, what the most important political issues were. Of the five people I asked, four of them said gun control was their main issue. Three of them said their second most important issue was health care.

Many of these kids live in the projects. Illegal handguns are a part of their reality. Since they've never really been a part of mine, this response was surprising to hear at first. I mentioned what the kids said to my supervisor. He told me that if I truly wanted to understand where these kids were coming from, that I should visit one of their homes. I told him that I would probably feel pretty vulnerable, and he just said to me, "How do you think they feel? It's a miracle these kids are even here right now."

"But health care?" I asked Charlie. He pursed his lips and sighed deeply, "A lot of these kids' parents are single, and nearly all of their parents can't afford to get sick. When they do, weight falls on the shoulders of the kids to earn money for their households. The parents are the number one reason kids drop out of school. Money is of higher importance than going to school."

Class polarization is immanent. The nature of it, though, is such that it continues to occur at an increasing rate if measures aren't taken to halt it. The election of Barack Obama may prove to be a step forward for blacks in the United States to finally gain equal representation, but my guess is that it probably won't do too much in just four years. The change that this country seems so desperate for needs to come from within people, not a president. Whether we admit to ourselves that we're subconsciously racist or not, our simple adherence to society as it is makes all of us, myself included, accountable for how the impoverished groups of people in our society are treated.

I am willing to admit that I, like many born in this country, was born into and thus unknowingly adhered to the hegemonic social predisposition that whites in the United States were more important, or "better" than blacks. Despite the fact that progress had been made in the United States in regards to civil rights, there were still those subconscious subtleties that remained in our culture and in us. This video demonstrates exactly what I'm saying. Sure, my mother may have told me not to be racist, but why, then, did she lock the car doors when we drove through a black neighborhood?

In my most humble opinion, I think that in order to truly understand that our culture's preconceived racial conception is false and unjustifiable, one must be able to identify and isolate the very events that led them to that conclusion in the first place. For me, my brief experience as a mentor in the Bronx was an event that opened my eyes in many ways. Mainly, the experience assessed, in me, how far I've come, and how far I still need to go in my understanding of how things relate to me, race included. This is to say, of course, that I realize the inherent hypocrisy of me even writing this.

More often than not, it is difficult for a person to change the way they view things just because other people tell them to. No one likes being wrong, myself included. But when the wool is pulled from our eyes, and the truth of things is laid out before us. It is difficult to continue going through life with the ideas and opinions we had once so blindly clung to. Racial inequality is just one of the things that the better of us struggle with every day to consciously try and rectify. In closing, I suppose the purpose of me writing this, if anyone has even read this far, is to say that I haven't forgotten my social responsibility as an individual: try to remember not to remember to lock my car doors whenever a black person walks passed.

Current Events: December 4, 2008

2008-12-04T09:19:00.001-08:00

A brief summary to bring you up to date with my world through my eyes: take a deep breath.

The Stupid Economy

We're in the midst of an economic collapse in the United States. Everyone's talking about it, been talking about it, and yes, will continue talking about it. Under the umbrella of this recession, which the "experts" say began in December of 2007, is a countless array of topics to suit all people's tastes. Whether it's food prices, the cost of education, gas prices or the cost of living, people everywhere have money as the main focus in their lives. Not really sure what's changed since all this recession talk started, but here we are: here and now.

What's been on the news lately (the past couple of weeks) has been the auto industry. United States automakers are scrambling to see where they went wrong, and what's worse, what they need to do to turn a profit. Last month the CEOs from the big three, GM, Ford and Chrysler, all went to Congress to ask for bailout money after showing up in their own private jets. Congress said no. The CEOs then threatened that if their companies went under, then this country will sink through a mere recession and into, yes, a depression. Congress still said no. Congress, like myself, would like to see not only the outstretched hand of the auto industry, but a plan within that outstretched hand that will guarantee that this "crisis" won't happen again.

Let's face it: when it comes to designing cars, the United States have floundered severely. For brevity's sake, I will not go into why I think they've floundered. All I'll say about it is this: I used to drive a Chevy, and now I drive a Honda. If the big three expect people to buy their cars, if they expect bailout money from me and all of you, then they're going to have to remember 2 important words: fuel efficiency.

CNN Coverage of the Mumbai Attacks

I was in Buffalo for the Thanksgiving holiday last week. Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite days of the year. I've always loved flying home to Chicago from New York to be with my family and friends, lounge on the couch, watch football, and gorge myself with a spread of the best food I'd probably have all year. This year, however, since the economy is so tight and i can't afford a 400 dollar plane ticket, I decided to go up to my girlfriend's hometown to visit some of her family and see where she came from. I arrived, and her family was warm, gracious and accommodating.

We arrived on a wednesday, which was the first day of the attacks on Mumbai. Now, I'm not going to call these men terrorists, even though they fit our country's media's perception of a terrorist to the 't' (pun intended). If a kid who shoots up a college classroom isn't going to be considered or labeled a terrorist by the news stations, then I am not going to perpetuate the double standard that George W. Bush has created by calling these men terrorists either. Instead, I'm going to call them what they are: gunmen. Anyone care to dispute me on this?

By the third day of the standoff, these gunmen combined to kill over 180 people, and injure over 300 more. While a couple of the gunmen were apprehended or found dead, many of the remaining were said to have escaped by starting a fire as a diversion. Whether I believe that or not is another story for another blog. On Friday night, after my girlfriend and her family had all gone to bed, I stayed up and watched Larry King Live on CNN. Yes, I know, it's not a legitimate news source, but it's all I had at the time. Regardless, I watched with horror the pictures that came onto the screen. Bodies covered in bloody sheets, a marble corridor pooling with red puddles. Crying women. Men with guns. An older woman is dragged by her ankles out onto the street; she's dead. As I watched the pictures, the voice of one of the people who had been inside the hotel kept saying, "There is blood all over! Blood all over!"

By this point in the ordeal, police didn't even know if they could go in to give assistance to those who were in need of it. Several explosions were still going off. Imagine: 3 days of being trapped in a hotel, and not knowing if this group of younger-looking, irrational and unreasonable religious fundamentalists was going to take my life. I tried to imagine, and it was awful. I imagined being there, barricading the door, hiding under the bed, crying for my mother. I thought of my girlfriend and how sad it would make her if something like this had happened to me. I imagined experiencing the account of a man who was in the building at the time he saw several people drop dead right in front of him. It was difficult enough to try and recreate those accounts, but I knew that my imagination could never do justice to the first hand experiences of those victims. Larry King then said that his time was up, but that CNN would be returning in two hours with extended coverage of the developments there, and that I should not go anywhere. For two hours until then, however, CNN would be airing an encore presentation of Anderson Cooper's Heroes award ceremony... "Wow" I thought to myself. These people really don't give a shit about what they're reporting, or how their reports may affect its viewers.

Needless to say, I was feeling a little bit scared; a little bit vulnerable. I went upstairs to try and wake my girlfriend up and tell her how much it scared me to think of something like that happening to me, but all I did was sort of piss her off. Unable to sleep, I returned to the very thing that induced me with such great anxiety to now deliver me with mindless banter and nonsense: the television.

Just a few channels down from CNN was Conan O'Brien. He was doing some skit about holiday gifts for this year: a vomiting Kermit the Frog and a masturbating Grizzly Bear. The skit, with one absurd gesture leading to another, made me laugh out loud in the exact same spot, where, just minutes earlier, I teared up at the thought of being violated by religious fanatics. This is why I'm writing about the Mumbai attacks: not necessarily because of what had happened, (which was terrible) but the way in which the news media uses words, pictures and gestures in order to conjure up ideas in people's minds. These ideas, however heavily laden they may be with graphic images and the like, are fleeting. All one has to do is flip the channel to be affected from the opposite direction. Such is the nature of our culture and our existence. We watch the news, we hear what is said, we feel for the victims for a moment or two, and we converse over the implications of the unfolded events. We do all of this, and then we flip the channel to laugh at a spring-loaded masturbating bear.