Another 2-month gap? Jeez. I don't really have any excuse. I'm just lazy as hell.
News? There's lots of it.
School's started, which is a drag but it's nice seeing all my friends every day. Before the yearly advent of school, I went on a trip to the Boundary Waters in Minnesota. That was fairly fun- I might post some pictures later.
I only saw two movies this summer, Stardust and Rush Hour 3. They were both fairly good, but stardust wasn't very true to the book.
This is an embarrassingly short post, but I'm hoping I can motivate myself to post more often from now on.
2.9.07
19.7.07
Spanish is so tiring
I've been continuing my classes at UCR, and therefore have not been able to post the last couple of weeks. What a pain, pages and pages of homework and such. Everyone in that class hates me, I think. They don't really listen to me and they usually only laugh at my mistakes. But I'm being emo. It's alright because it'll be over in a week and then I'm home free...
Until normal school starts, that is. Bleh. I've got quite the schedule lined up for next year:
AP European History, AP Calculus, AP Physics, AP Psychology, PE, American Lit, and IB Economics.
My mom wants me to drop a couple, but I think I can handle it.
Basically, I'm going to have two weeks at the start of August of absolute downtime, and then we have a two week trip out east, and we get back the day before school starts. Summer's being all short-ish this year.
Short post, but I'm tired. Besides, I don't have much news.
Until normal school starts, that is. Bleh. I've got quite the schedule lined up for next year:
AP European History, AP Calculus, AP Physics, AP Psychology, PE, American Lit, and IB Economics.
My mom wants me to drop a couple, but I think I can handle it.
Basically, I'm going to have two weeks at the start of August of absolute downtime, and then we have a two week trip out east, and we get back the day before school starts. Summer's being all short-ish this year.
Short post, but I'm tired. Besides, I don't have much news.
28.6.07
Oh. Wow. Fire.
So, some people might have heard about the big fire here in Riverside. See, there was this lot that was being used by a plastics company to store bits and pieces of stuff, and somehow it caught fire and everything went bye-bye. There were these noxious black fumes coming from it, and they even told people downwind to stay inside. Thankfully, though, most of the smoke passed over my neighborhood before it settled. I feel sorry for the people on the other side of the mountain though.
My dad and I think it might be arson perpetrated by the owner for insurance, since everything on the lot was unsellable. I guess that sending toxic smoke over several neighborhoods is an ok way to make money, right?
Here are some pictures.
So I go/
My dad and I think it might be arson perpetrated by the owner for insurance, since everything on the lot was unsellable. I guess that sending toxic smoke over several neighborhoods is an ok way to make money, right?
Here are some pictures.
26.6.07
Summer School Spanish and Communism in Three Dimesions
Well, I'm in Spanish 4 at UCR now. I just finished my second class period. It's been a real struggle, but I can keep up ok. One thing has me pissed off to hell and back, though.
In this class, we have 5 required textbooks, all of which are available at the UCR bookstore. As you walk in to the UCR bookstore, you are confronted by a giant plastic bear perched on top of a plastic blur mountain with the letters ''UCR'' emblazoned on the side. Continuing past the eerily staring animal, you enter the bookstore proper, where a multitude of books, clustered to the right half of the room, appear as unwanted as lepers. Directly ahead, a sign hanging above a set of stairs reads "TEXTBOOKS ON LOWER FLOOR". Nothing so far poses any sort of problem. The problem is the other half of the bookstore, which is entirely taken up by a gross display of pure consumerism. The same three letters ("UCR") cry out desperately for your attention from notebooks, mugs, pillows, t-shirts, sweatshirts, pencils, teddy bears, paperweights, pom-poms, foam fingers, pennants, license plate frames, bumper stickers, posters, postcards, and all other sorts of despicable paraphernalia. Unfortunately, my suspicion is that the same scenario repeats itself across many campuses nationwide.
My simple question is: Why? Why are these sorts of things necessary? Either it is just an attempt of the university to make more money, in which case it's monetary greed, or there's actually a market for UCR ashtrays. In the latter case, we deal with a different kind of greed, the desire to keep bits of the past. In some ways, this greed is worse because it feeds the monetary kind of greed. Avarice is horrible enough when applied to money, but the inability to move on and the need to hold on to the past is evident of severe societal problems. Putting the UCR bookstore aside, why is our culture as a whole so obsessed with the material? Not just the material, even, but also the past- it's like people constantly need material goods to remind themselves of deeds or accomplishments. There's a word for that, you might say, and it's perfectly acceptable- people are entitled to their 'trophies'. I wholeheartedly agree that trophies are important, but not everywhere or for every deed. However, our society feels like it needs to be rewarded too much and too often, more than likely for menial accomplishments. One would hope that the pride of the accomplishment itself would be easily remembered.
In any case, while this rampant consumerism was raging through half the bookstore, I went downstairs to try and find the textbooks I need for Spanish. Lo and behold, even though they had all sorts of UCR artifacts, they only had one of my textbooks. That was yesterday, and another two came in today, so now I have three textbooks out of five.
Things will work out in the end, though. I'm not really angry that the books aren't there, I just fond the social ramifications interesting.
So I Go/
My simple question is: Why? Why are these sorts of things necessary? Either it is just an attempt of the university to make more money, in which case it's monetary greed, or there's actually a market for UCR ashtrays. In the latter case, we deal with a different kind of greed, the desire to keep bits of the past. In some ways, this greed is worse because it feeds the monetary kind of greed. Avarice is horrible enough when applied to money, but the inability to move on and the need to hold on to the past is evident of severe societal problems. Putting the UCR bookstore aside, why is our culture as a whole so obsessed with the material? Not just the material, even, but also the past- it's like people constantly need material goods to remind themselves of deeds or accomplishments. There's a word for that, you might say, and it's perfectly acceptable- people are entitled to their 'trophies'. I wholeheartedly agree that trophies are important, but not everywhere or for every deed. However, our society feels like it needs to be rewarded too much and too often, more than likely for menial accomplishments. One would hope that the pride of the accomplishment itself would be easily remembered.
In any case, while this rampant consumerism was raging through half the bookstore, I went downstairs to try and find the textbooks I need for Spanish. Lo and behold, even though they had all sorts of UCR artifacts, they only had one of my textbooks. That was yesterday, and another two came in today, so now I have three textbooks out of five.
Things will work out in the end, though. I'm not really angry that the books aren't there, I just fond the social ramifications interesting.
So I Go/
28.5.07
25.5.07
20.5.07
18.5.07
Neighborhood Observations
Today I walked through my neighborhood, not looking for anything, just seeing things. Ans because I was seeing, not looking, I noticed things, and thought about things.
One thing I saw was one one of my neighbors' houses. It is a wholly unremarkable house, exept for one minute detail. You see, the house and it's yard are above the grade of the street, and the edge between the two levels is lined with a wall (also unremarkable). The surface of the yard is level with the top of the wall, and the street is level with the bottom. Although the purpose of a wall is to be impenetrable, this wall had a crack in it. The neighbor's lawn required copious amounts of watering to keep it a uniformly green and bland as possible; more, in fact, than the grass could handle. The excess water spilled through the crack in the wall and out onto the sidewalk. Because the neighbors perpetually water their lawn, there is a constant stream of water, always at least a trickle, flowing across the cement into the gutter. Now, where there is water there is normally some form of life, and in this case there's a gigantic algal bloom occupying the space where the water most frequently travels. I just found it to be an interesting concept, a bloom of algae in the middle of suburbia, surrounded by the gray of concrete and the black of asphalt; that you could have a marsh on solid cement.
The world would be a more interesting place if more people would imitate the way the algae sticks out, green and red hues, and purple, instead of becoming grey like the concrete masses.
Deeper than our usual fare, I know, but I felt like writing down what I was thinking about my neighborhood. There might be more of these installments.
-C
One thing I saw was one one of my neighbors' houses. It is a wholly unremarkable house, exept for one minute detail. You see, the house and it's yard are above the grade of the street, and the edge between the two levels is lined with a wall (also unremarkable). The surface of the yard is level with the top of the wall, and the street is level with the bottom. Although the purpose of a wall is to be impenetrable, this wall had a crack in it. The neighbor's lawn required copious amounts of watering to keep it a uniformly green and bland as possible; more, in fact, than the grass could handle. The excess water spilled through the crack in the wall and out onto the sidewalk. Because the neighbors perpetually water their lawn, there is a constant stream of water, always at least a trickle, flowing across the cement into the gutter. Now, where there is water there is normally some form of life, and in this case there's a gigantic algal bloom occupying the space where the water most frequently travels. I just found it to be an interesting concept, a bloom of algae in the middle of suburbia, surrounded by the gray of concrete and the black of asphalt; that you could have a marsh on solid cement.
The world would be a more interesting place if more people would imitate the way the algae sticks out, green and red hues, and purple, instead of becoming grey like the concrete masses.
Deeper than our usual fare, I know, but I felt like writing down what I was thinking about my neighborhood. There might be more of these installments.
-C
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