Movies and movies!

   There are definitely a ton of great movies that everyone should see at least once in their life. We all know classics like "Back to the Future", "Star Wars" and "Forrest Gump". But there also great movies that might not be up to the "classics" status, but they could easily get there. My list of top ten movies actually mostly consists of series of movies including the Star Wars series, The Lord of the Rings series, the Rush Hour trilogy, the Bourne trilogy, the Harry Potter series, and the Ocean's trilogy. These are all great series and some I like a little better than the other, but I'm not about to delve into each series to pick out which individual movie in each series are better than the others. My reason for so many series? The Star Wars series is pretty addicting to watch, the Lord of the Rings series is suspenseful, The Rush Hour trilogy is comedic while also filled with action, the Bourne trilogy is just great action with a kick--- main character, the Harry Potter series...well...that's self explanatory, and the Ocean's Trilogy has some of the greatest heist story lines.
   I definitely also have favorite movies that aren't part of a series. My favorite individually planned movie is "Book of Eli". Although this movie has some religious background and elements, it also contains intense action and Denzel Washington! Although "Book of Eli" isn't Denzel's greatest known movies, partly because of its recent release in 2010, it definitely has the potential. I just think this movie is a must see and the ending will definitely blow your mind. Other individual movies include Fight Club, Forrest Gump and Up. Up was mostly thought up to represent most Disney movies as a whole. You can't deny that there are great Disney movies out there and Up was one of them...although I think the part that definitely made it great was the ending and the credits.
   Fight Club and Forrest Gump can mostly be categorized as a modern "classic/must-see". Fight Club might not be as prestigious as Forrest Gump, but it's definitely a great movie. Fight Club contains two equally interesting characters along with an insane idea and storyline. Then the last 20 minutes or so just completely makes you rethink how you have been seeing things. Then the last 5 minutes of the movie are kind of like "whattt? oh hot damn". Forrest Gump, as hopefully everyone knows, is an honored classic featuring a uniquely brilliant main character and a touching storyline. The time setting of the movie as it progresses is pretty creative and there are plenty of emotionally touching moments.

Themes of a Salesman

    The play, The Death of a Salesman contains several significant themes. One such obvious theme is the theme of the American Dream, which we have all mentioned countless times. The theme of the American Dream involves the idea that hard work will produce wealth and great advantages in life. However, the positivity of this theme is not displayed in the play, rather the failure of the American Dream is displayed through Willy's life. Willy's life is shown to have a miserable quality along with large amounts of failure, including in his sons. The failure of Willy's pursuit for the American Dream wonderfully segways into another theme.

   A great, but unfortunate theme, in The Death of a Salesman is that parts of life don't always turn out to be the way they present themselves. Willy's entire life show this theme through his constant troubles at home and at work. Although Willy constantly pursues his American Dream through great work and ownership of a house and even a car, Willy's life still contains cracks here and there. Willy's house and his possessions are in states of needed repair such as his car, his ceiling and his car. Furthermore, his career life is failing him and ultimately making him miserable. The unfortunate course of Willy's life shows how his initial thoughts of hark work to gain great advantages are not only different from what he imagined, but almost completely opposite.

    One more theme of the Death of a Salesman is the fact that everybody has only a limited amount of time in life and that it is important to keep track of your time. Willy, as usual, is the character in the book that goes against this theme. Willy keeps no way to manage or track his time, therefore he has little bearing on where he is in life. Although Willy is getting old, especially in his career, he fails to recognize this fact and insists on continuing his work despite the loss of his good reputation and credibility. Therefore, due to Willy's loss of time, his life is slowly deteriorating without his realization.

So I wrote a letter today...or maybe a couple...

    I honestly don't mind writing letters and I sometimes actually write and send legitimate letters to friends if I need to. However, I'm pretty sure anyone would agree that pen-and-paper letters are pretty much outdated. Since this classic mode of communication is so outdated, the cost of letters and postal services in general are increasing. Sure, people still mail packages, order packages and mail out immensely large stacks of wedding invitations. However, not as many normal letters are sent nowadays as they used to be say...in our parents' time, especially since the wonderful convenience of emails and AIM.
  
    There are plenty of other things that people might consider "outdated". Apparently physical CDs are getting outdated since the dawn of MP3s, itunes and other digital music sources. Furthermore, apparently I'm one of the few who still goes out to buy CDs...but that's just one of my weird  habits. Out of the past five or ten CDs I have recently bought, I have mostly only used the physical CDs once simply to rip it onto iTunes before uploading it onto my iPod. However, part of my weird habit is the fact that I like to be able to physically hold the music that I bought. Also, if my computer somehow crashes and wipes out all my music I still have the physical CD as a backup. Honestly, who can deny a snazzy album cover sitting on their bookshelf?

    Newspapers and magazines are soon becoming outdated, possibly followed by physical books since the set up of news sites on the internet and the invention of digital book readers. I'm, again, one of those weirder people who likes to physically hold certain objects, and books and magazines fit under that category. I honestly enjoy going out to buy books and being able to actually hold a book while I read it. I don't like the idea of reading a full book on a screen. With a book on-screen you have less of an indication of how far into the book you've read. What about the glare of lights? With a physical book, extra light helps you read...with a screen, extra light often makes it insanely hard to read.

So let's talk about feelings...

    There's this little feeling called guilt. Although it's only one out of many emotions, most people can agree that guilt is a miserable feeling to have. Knowing that you are a witness to, or the contributor to a wrongful event that compromises the ideals or morality of any individual is often a dooming ticket to acquiring guilt. Everyone has had their guilt trips, whether large or small. Either way, people deal with guilt in their own ways. Some simply distract themselves from their guilt, some wallow in self-pity because of their guilt, some people go out an apologize and some people go the extra mile to make up for their wrongful actions. I can't prescribe any solutions of getting rid of guilt, but a great way to help is to somehow let out some of that guilt. Keeping all your guilt pent up inside is not a healthy habit and could possibly drive one insane. Therefore, letting some of it out by talking to someone or apologizing will help relinquish some of that guilt.
  
     As bad as guilt gets, a worse feeling can be disappointment. In my opinion, depending on who you receive disappointment from, it can feel even worse than guilt itself. The feelings of disappointment against you especially hit home when someone close to you, say a relative or wicked close friend, reveals their disappointment in you. I'm sure many people have also had this experience before. The disappointment of a close friend or relative often inflicts guilt and leaves you thinking and most often regretting about the situation that has caused such disappointment. Disappointment is harder to relieve as it is a feeling felt by someone else towards you. Therefore trying to get rid of someone's disappointment in you requires wonderful social skills to apologize to that person and somehow make it up to them.

    This blog entry has actually kind of depressed me. However, as I sit in my room avoiding the rest of my statistics homework while listening to the Killers, I'm coming up with blanks for my third paragraph. I remember when I was young, around 4 or 5 years old, I thought that being a 10 year old was amazing and that you were taller and cooler. When I was 10, I thought being a 15 or 16 year old would be amazing and I would be one of the giants carrying around large books and doing whatever else we do. Now at this age, when I look at the younger kids I think: "I used to be one of those kids looking up at an older kid like me". A point I'm trying to express is that we don't notice how much older we are than we were before and how we are now the generation that the younger school children look up to.

So we talked about symbols today...

    There are just tons of symbols in today's society. There are trademark symbols, logos, artistic symbols, religious symbols and many other different types of symbols. Symbols are often used to represent different things or different groups. As I type, I am watching the movie Black Hawk Down. However, I do not intend to fully interpret all the symbolism in this movie. Although, this movie will probably include obvious symbols as it continues.
   
    Unfortunately this movie has been quite literal in symbolism. From what i have watched so far, most of the Africans represent oppressive African soldiers under the corrupt government. Then the American soldiers simply represent a supporting force brought in to restore order. Going off on a tangent, but there are a ton of symbols used in the military. Every ranking in the military system comes with its own symbol and every operation is given a symbolistic code name.
   
   I feel required to throw off every symbol in this movie that comes up. These multiple helicopters and humvees represent America's wealth and implied military power. At one point in the movie, a child-soldier who was with his father ended up accidentally shooting and killing his father. This could possibly represent the point that the African factions and militia in the country are tearing themselves apart and will eventually destroy themselves. However, the crashes of the Black Hawks also represent America's potential weaknesses.

So we're in the computer lab

    I guess right about now I'm blogging simply to kill time while I compose my essay in my head. I often find that a good hook takes a large amount of effort, especially the hook for the introductory paragraph. The hook is often desribed as the one sentence that is meant to catch and keep the reader's attention. As the hook for the introductory paragraph I often feel that this particular sentence needs to be especially strong and captivating. I simply wish our essays could be loosely formed with casual conversation. In that case I would probably end up submitting a blog-like essay.

    I don't think it's a good thing to have to wrack my brain when I'm trying to write my blog. I'm not sure if that's the correct spelling and usage for wrack, but it was worth a try. I see blogs as a place to write down my mind splurges without conflict or hesitation. As a random side note, although these lab chairs are made of hard plastic or whatever material, I really like the fact that you can bend backwards as far as you want. My desk chair at home is rather comfortable with a decent amount of leathered cushioning but it can't bend backwards nearly as far as these chairs. On another irrelevant point, I got my desk chair at Ikea.

    Ikea definitely has some pretty snazzy furniture and it's not necessarily as expensive as other furniture stores. However, I wish the closest Ikea was closer to Framingham. I forget exactly what town the Ikea is in, but I think it might be Reading. Last time I went to Ikea I was amazed that they had a small food court and that they put arrows on the floor. It had been a while since I had last gone to Ikea and I previously thought Ikea left you on your own to try and navigate the store. However, I bet so many people have gotten lost in their stores that they decided to put helpful arrows on the ground. Imagine living in a house as large as an Ikea store. I would definitely get lost in that house, even after living in that house for ten years or so.

Funny that I just came from English class two minutes ago...

   I completely remember watching The Crucible in its motion picture version last year in AP US History I. We had gotten to the point in history about Puritans and the settling of the English colonies. I believe we watched only half of the movie though, because I don't remember how the ending turns out. However the movie, like any other movie adapted from a piece of literature, included one extra change. In the written play The Crucible the setting jumps straight to Betty unconscious in bed. However, the very beginning of the motion picture started with a scene of the girls dancing in the woods. I thought the motion picture was very well put together and the extra dancing-in-the-woods scene included everything that was later described by the girls. Tituba was shown chanting next to a pot while Mercy ran around naked and Abigail drank chicken's blood and eventually a frog jumped into the pot, making all the girls scream before they took off into the woods screaming after being discovered by Reverend Parris.
   I will not lie, the actress who played Abigail in the motion picture was pretty, but she also had that look that contained a mean streak. The actress had that look of someone who does not put up with anybody's...ridiculous behavior. Abigail is also described in the play as being a strong, powerful girl who is not afraid to kill. I have to give credit for the motion picture company's acting scouts for finding the right actress who looked like she could take out anybody.
  As a side note, I also remember one of my history classes where we were talking about the Salem Witch Trials. However I do not remember details about what was being taught because I was falling asleep. Although I was sitting in the front row right in front of the teacher, I could not help but doze off a little bit. We were actually talking about the land wars that had been going on in Salem at the time. I remember picking up little bits of information in my sleep such as the rivalry between the Putnam family and other families in the village. I also remember we had to write a thesis about the land wars in Salem and unfortunately I don't think I did too well on that assignment. However, I am doing my best to get to sleep as soon as possible so hopefully I won't have to fall asleep in any classes this year.


P.S. So far this year, I have only fallen asleep in one class, AP Statistics, but I was lucky enough to not have missed any important material.

I'm lacking a title...

    So we get to take a rest from blogging about the American Dream, just saying. I have nothing against the American Dream but every now and then everything needs a break. After the first blog I was already at the point  where every other writing assignment I wrote somehow involved the American Dream. In AP History, since we were appropriately learning about the industrial revolution of the US, I ended up including properties of the American Dream in my chapter 24 essay. Although it wasn't a bad thing to include the American Dream, I just thought it was weird that the very first thing I thought of was the American Dream. Anyways, this blog entry is a break from the topic of the American Dream.
   I spent pretty much all day today looking for some wicked cool metaphor or example of literary terms in real life. I'm sorry to say I came up with nothing. I believe I ended up looking at the boxes for stuff like cereal and other food just to find an interesting example of a literary term. Unfortunately I am writing this blog entry based on my flow of thoughts in my head. I completely forgot the actual literary term for the type of story that takes simply the characters flow of thoughts. However, that is pretty much how I am typing this blog entry. Furthermore, please excuse the extended degree of casual attitude in this blog, but I believe the freedom of the blog's topic at least allows some leniency.
   While I was writing the sentence above about literary terms and trying to find examples in real life, I decided I could talk a little bit about dramatic irony. Everybody that has ever read a book, or watched television or a movie has most likely experienced dramatic irony. Dramatic irony is defined as when the audience knows more than the character knows. Frankly, the experience of dramatic irony completely frustrates me. Occasionally, if I get too worked up, I end up being the type of person that will yell at the TV. The things that usually get me worked up are the shows that involve really undeveloped, impossibly ignorant characters that have the intelligence, both in terms of common sense and book smarts, of a tiny mammal. These characters and the situations they often get into prompt me into yelling something along the lines of "How did you think that was a good idea? Did you really not see what was going to happen? Geez you are so stupid!". This can count as a fair warning to anyone that wants to invite me to watch a very badly made movie or an unbelievably unintelligible TV show, I strongly suggest you do not invite me to such an activity.

The Puritans and the American Dream

    The Puritans have been greatly disliked throughout American history and many people today still think badly of them. Most people will think of the Puritans as a strict-ruled, insane group of people. The largest event that sticks out about the history of the Puritans is mostly the Salem Witch Trials which executed twenty people believed to have been corrupted with witchcraft. Furthermore, the Puritans' dark belief of predestination is viewed undesirably by today's people of many different religions. However, the Puritans' expedition to New England to establish Massachusetts Bay Colony is a very important accomplishment and model for what is now known as the American Dream.
    Despite the Puritan's strict and sometimes harsh beliefs, their goals and dreams need to be properly recognized. The Puritans' movement to New England was fueled by their own dream to create a better community for their children. Although their dream was reinforced by the foreign goal to reform the world of its corruption it still provided the basis of the modern American Dream. The modern American Dream is based on the hope to reform one's life, and although the goals of reform have changed over time, the principal of change has remained the backbone of the American Dream. The realization that the Puritans' efforts to create a new society is simply their form of the American Dream helps make one realize that the Puritans' were all dream-seeking humans as most Americans are today.
    Although the Puritans have made grave mistakes and produced horrifying events, the Puritan's also strived to be a peaceful society and therefore should not be judged as harshly as they are today. When compared to the Pilgrims and Quakers that also moved to the New World for a new beginning, the Puritans are seen as almost modest. The Puritans continued to respect organized religion, unlike the more radical sects that often came to the New World to completely break ties with England. Furthermore, the Puritans did not make it their goal to destroy the Native Americans that lived near them and enjoyed nearly forty years of peace between the Natives and the Puritans. Although one must admit that the Puritans had their times of hysteria, especially during the Salem Witch Trials, they were still technically immigrants who were searching for a better life and who tried their hardest to achieve their goals. Therefore, the Puritans do not deserve their reputation of hatred and disgust to the extent that it is often interpreted.

How does the American Dream affect your family?

   It is simple to say that every person who has lived in America has arrived with the American Dream in mind. Furthermore, every individual keeps a differing version of the American Dream in their mind. My family, or at least my parents, resemble a modern American Dream searching family. The properties of immigration, education and home ownership all exist within my family's history in America. I am therefore a product of sorts, of my parents' American Dream.
   My parents came to America to satisfy their economic and educational desires. My mother and father came to America as a couple from Taiwan in order to fill a job position my father was fortunate to have found. Not only did their immigration to America fuel their opportunity for economic success, it also helped my mother reach a goal of quality education. Although there was nothing wrong with Taiwan's college system, my mother attended the University of Pennsylvania for her graduate school studies. Eventually my brother and I were born as a part of their dream to raise a family.
    Many people strive to gain as much of their American Dream as possible. After my birth, my parents continued their own efforts towards their dream, although I can not completely speak for their thoughts on their dreams. Shortly after I was born, we moved from Maryland where I was born, to Houston, Texas and into a comfortable one floor house. Maybe a couple of years ago, I was in my basement just looking around and I found several photo albums. In one of the photo albums I found a photo of my parents holding me and standing in front of both our house in Houston and a new minivan, although the minivan is now very old and has been sold. However, this photo showed the pride of my parents in their successes towards accomplishing their American Dream.
    I realize this has been all about my parents. However, without their American Dream, I might not be here writing this blog.