Let's think about having to act

Acting is fun.  Playing a character is fun.  That's one of the reasons i enjoy playing dungeons and dragons, it's not completely acting, but its setting yourself in the mindset of a created character, that is not your own.

In class i had to act as a homeless guy.  It was okay with me, i was just acting in front of a few people i could possibly call friends.  After that the professor said we could present it on a stage, i panicked a bit on the inside but ignored the comment.  Later i filled in the space for another group's mini play, which was fun, i didn't have to know my lines just act them out and the character was a dick so it was fun to play.  I thought i was done with this.

Some classes afterwards I learned i had to do the same thing i had done on a stage.  OH BOY. Oh no. I couldn't escape.  My crappy acting skills will be shown for other people to see.  I hoped no one will go so they would think of me as "that guy that played the homeless guy" when they see me around.  I hoped i could get out somehow, because it was stressing me out just to think that i would have to act in front of people.  I absolutely adore acting silly but i never do it much if i dont trust or know the person, and just having to act serious in front of a crowd shook me.  In the end it all went well, no one actually cared, i bet everyone that went didn't have much else to do, and they probably understood how i felt, so i was ok with the outcome.

Final thoughts: Holy crap i thought i wouldnt come out alright but i did, somehow. 2/10 would not do again.

Let's think about DM-ing

The DM, the Dungeon Master, is the person that controls a Dungeons and Dragons game(there are other definitions and games, but im gonna go with this one).  

Recently, in this last year, i have accomplished what i believe to be a geek goal of the highest caliber, I began playing Dungeons and Dragons(D&D).  D&D is a game where a DM makes a world and a situation, including characters and battles, and the Players create Characters(called Player characters, or PC's ) to go on an adventure in this world and meet the DM's world and Characters(this time Non-playable Characters, or NPC's).

After a while of playing, I showed it to some of my friends and I became their DM in a game we decided to play.  This is such an amazing chance, but it has so many things to do.  What I love the most and have trouble with DMing is world building.  I have created a new world and created it's towns, but not how they look like and I'm missing it's lore.

Sure the people of Bolkos are peaceful people that escaped the war, but what was that war about? Who fought who?  Sure Kelos is a merchant community, but what does it look like? who lives and works there? What are the Dwarven communities called and what do they mine?  

DMing is a hard job but it's great to see players enjoy the world.

Final thoughts: i enjoy this process a lot, even if i am just a beginner and i hope i can finish this game.

Let's think of Serving in Silence

1. Describe these reactions:

A. Military: Not acceptable;immoral;condemned in military regulation.
B. Father: Doesn't accept it, even when he does he wants it to be a secret.
C. Children Each Son (s):Big three are ok, but the youngest is in denial.

2. Margarethe's decision to tell

A. the military :Just popped during an evaluation
B. her children :has to tell them because of a potential lawsuit.
C. her father: tell her father before confrontation.

3. What is your reaction to this true story? Do you believe that she should have kept her secret or told it to everyone? Explain your reasons why.


I very much enjoyed this story.  I should have looked for more information on it but from what I saw, the story was good.  After thinking on it for a while, I noticed it’s time frame.  I’ve had a few homosexual friends and they’ve had problems coming out in our time, this happened before I was even born.  One must be amazingly lucky to have such an accepting group of family and friends to support you if you go through something like this.  I don’t think there’s a right answer to that question, it’s really about how one feels.  As she said she wasn’t hiding it, she was just, not exposing it all the time, it’s her relationships, she does what she wants, and what she feels is right.

5. How would Dr. Kinsey explain the Margarethe Cammermeyer's sexuality?
She is a mother of 4 boys so how can she be lesbian? Is it her choice?

I'm not sure. We had a debate and we classified her in different parts of his scale, but always on the homosexual part.  If she identifies as a lesbian then she is.  And possibly she didn't know until she fell in love.  It's not her choice, its who she is.




6.What does Margarethe believe about her sexuality as it relates to her identity?

It doesn't change who she is, it's just Part of who she is.

Let's think about Group work

                I have to say, of all the group work I have done throughout the years, I think this has been some of the most successful one.  Sure there’s always some people doing a bit more than others, but this time we all separated work equally and worked together.  It was kind of weird at first, actually, it was weird all over.  Having to act, discuss and comment on each other’s blogs is weird, but it opens up good discussion.  Last class we had a good discussion about lying to one self and the movie we watched, although it seem a bit harsh at a moment, I think we need more of this type of discussion, as long as everyone is respectful of others and accepts to some terms like hearing each other out and not blocking their minds to what the other is saying.

Final thought's:  8/10, i wish i wouldn't need to have to do more group work but i know i will.

Let' think about this blog

Hold on for a bit as i get meta here and write what I think about writing my thoughts of things on a blog.

     "Let's think about thinking about things."-Me, when I was thinking of what gimmick 

to go with for the blog.

      The main idea for this blog was to be like a critic and try to have some fun with analyzing what i had to discuss from class. I have to say, it ended being funner than i expected, but it still runs with the "since i was told to do it, I'm not going to enjoy it" syndrome, but hey, that telling me to do it made me start, and actually enjoy myself a bit, here I am writing my 10th blog post, I don't think I will write many more, but I can say I like those that are already written. After 10 blog posts around 300 to 600 words each, I can say I am still as lost and entertained by this as when I started.

     When I started I had no idea how a blog should be written, but I did know one thing,   I knew what I liked, and what I would read, so I decided I would write and make my blog just that.  It worked for me, talking about things I had seen as reviews and how I felt towards them, this didn't start as well but after a few posts, maybe because i had gotten a bit used to this, or because I was tired when writing the posts, but I began to write with a more honest(and sarcastic) tone which gave more life to my posts.  I think what i enjoyed most of my post was the final thoughts, and those have always been that, honest thoughts.  An example of this is my favorite post: Let's think about the 60's , It's informational about what the movie is, but it is shown in a sarcastic and possibly angry tone with how they were presented.  It show's my real reaction towards some aspects I wanted to point out, which in a blog, I can.

     This was what differed from here and my journal.  In my journal I organized thoughts by sprawling every little thing on paper with no thinking.  It was just a jumbled mess of words and whining with no purpose except being, but here I get to share my thoughts, when they're better organized, and that's what made this experience easier, and better for me.  The one thing I did not enjoy having to do in the blog experience was to comment on every of my groups blog posts, and I couldn't just comment it had to be some weird way of commenting (brought to you by Peter Elbow) because I don't necessarily have a consistent thought about everything, maybe i just liked a line or liked the post in general, I still need to comment something and this opens up vague comments most of the people are probably going to ignore because in the end, we all know it's for the grade and if someone actually cares about something they comment its going to get shrugged off "Oh hey look, everyone in my group commented, good"  it makes it lack the purpose it originally had, which is sad because I liked the idea of commenting, but not to those extremes of in every post, in a certain way, I felt like it took away personality which is what makes this great.

Final thoughts: 9/10 even though i don't think this will change my way of writing in the future, maybe I could write here from time to time.  If you wanna try doing this, go ahead, i don't think you're going to regret it if you do it freely.

Let's think about Trifles

"Well, women are used to worrying over trifles."

     Trifles, something simple, something that doesn't matter... like the fact that the case you're investigating is a homicide not suicide.

     Trifles is the story of an investigation of what seems like a suicide by a farmer and how the police investigate it.  Well, that's what it seems like at first, but after a while the attention shifts to the women that were with them, and it shows them conducting their own investigation.  At one point one of the men says the line that i wrote at the beginning of the post, and then you know they, the men, are going to be the ones worrying over "trifles".  The women find out by observing knitting patterns and remembering how the people involved in the case were, that it was actually a murder and that the farmer's wife had been practicing a noose knot with her yarn, this is proved when they see her bird tied to a tiny noose.  At the end, what still baffles me a bit is that the women didn't share what they had learned, personally i would like to prove those that think i don't matter wrong, but that wasn't their mindset.

     This story is great.  We see how men ignore women and they just get back without even letting them know it.  They found out all the details of a case they just decided was a suicide.  I'm not sure what else to say about it.  I enjoyed it but just once, it didn't have much of a reread feeling.  The story was ok, a bit predictable but its nice.  I wish we could see consequences to them keeping the info.

Final Thoughts:  Anyone that hasn't read it. should read it, I am sorry to spoil the good parts, but i didn't give any important information of the story. 6/10 wont read again.

Let's think about the 60's part 2

     Let's talk about the main plots of the 60's movie, the three Herlihy kids, well, two of these join into one story, so the Herlihy family.

    This is the story of a beautiful perfect white picket fence family with two boys and a girl, the oldest is about to get  scholarship and what can go wrong.  Well, a lot, depending on your beliefs.  The oldest son Brian lost his scholarship and decided to join the marines without knowing what it was (he says he thought it was more football, showing how little the people knew about the war), the middle child Michael starts going into movements and peace keeping, and the youngest, Katie, accepts everyone and she got pregnant and her dad threw a hissy fit and she couldn't handle it and left.

    What are we left with?  A PTSD Brian, always drinking and smoking.  A Michael looking for a better future but looking at the girl from his past.  Katie as a mother, ran away from home and raising little Rainbow in a "could be worse" scenario.

    Here we see the main source of discrimination at what seems like the core, the family.  Most of these problems can be tuned to one source, their father,  Brian felt like he needed to prove himself and since the father had been in the marines, he also joined to make him proud, Michael's problem at a point was he had to leave home because of his different opinions that clashed with his conservative father, and poor Katie had to leave because how her dad made her feel at her weakest points.  We see how conservatives of these times were okay with the war and against change, they couldn't even accept some of their loved ones because of these beliefs.

   But something that happens at the end shows how we progressed.  The fact that change is possible, and acceptance is key.

Final thoughts:  I want to get more into the characters but i think it is better to watch it, if you haven't give it a try.  Also: obvious love interest is obvious, but that wasn't the point of the story, it was showing this period, and it did so.

Let's think about the 60's

     A more accurate name for this would be Let's think about how racism is shown in "the 60's" mini series... but that's too long so i think the name it has goes better.

      I watched the 60's mini series (or movie, I'm still not sure which is it, it didn't seem episodic) and I was supposed to be watching it to see how these times were and see discrimination.  In class we've been having discrimination as a main theme for a while now, and when i watched this movie thinking it would be heavy with racism i actually ended up feeling underwhelmed.

     This feeling was probably brought by these misconceptions i had:

a) The story was only about discrimination.
b) or the main story points were going to be about racism.

I found a paper about the 60's online that i read before writing here to get some perspective but one of the line's threw me off, and I'll explain why.

"The movie takes place in many different areas starring two main families; a very suburban, white family who were excepting of blacks, and a very positive black family trying to push black rights in Mississippi. The movie portrayed many historical events while also including the families and how the two were intertwined."

    Although this movie does present these two families, at some point all the attention shifted from one family to the other ( I'm going to let you guess to which.).  I can't tell if it's because the 60's didn't have enough black movement on the second half of the decade or if they had to cut out those plot points in the movie because of the emotional story about the three white kids. These kids showed their types of  discrimination and gave a view to the 60's, but i feel like the black movement could have been presented better.

    That being said, what was shown of the black movement was great.  I loved how they portrayed the dancing scene with Katie accepting them and later on the peaceful movements moving Michael and making him see this world of civil right movements (wait are the other kids in these scenes too?)

    One of my favorite scenes is when Emmet has strayed from the path his father, a Priest, that had lead the march at Birmingham,  had made for him to help all of the African Americans move forward.  In this scene he sees how 1 act can be the destruction of everything that they had worked for and cause the death of the father he loved.  It is very emotional and it show's the viewer how important every little act is or could be.

Final thoughts:  I think the civil right movements and the moments with the African American family could have done without the other plots intertwining, i don't know if they did it because they didn't want two separate stories or because there is still racism in the industry, but it was done.  Apart from that, great music, great most of everything really, it was a good watch, 7/10 would watch again. Maybe. 

Let'sThink about The Journal

Picture that's on my journal

This is a topic i have been thinking of since the beginning of the journal.  I actually believe my first entry is about this that I'm about to say.  I feel like this is my video blogs (vlogs) on paper. 2 years ago I started vlogging with a group of people i met online and became friends with, and after a while i started doing daily ones for myself where i would talk about what i did in my day and about whatever was on my mind, and writing in the journal feels just like that.

Around 50 days in the videos, i stopped doing them daily, and for a few reasons, like : I was just complaining for 6 minutes, or i didn't feel like i had anything of true substance to say, and sometimes i felt like i could be using those 6 -15 minutes more productively.  That has been my problem writing in the Journal.  I didn't feel alright writing everyday because i felt a lot of times, like i was losing my time just complaining for 10 minutes, and sometimes this just made me feel worse.  Of course there were some times i actually talked about something important to me.

Here's the thing, I live a happy life with almost no problems apart from work stress (horrible i know, i am so tortured) so when i was thinking of problems to talk about or thoughts for going and tapping the jugular all that came out was work stress and the occasional "I kinda feel lonely" and that feeling goes away quickly, and i once or twice talked about the problems my family faced a few years back but apart from that I mostly just wrote about immediate thoughts that had no relation with each other  nor real context at all just a bunch of  "Im tired, i need to do work, im in x class and i want to keep reading my book" "i heard someone walk in, i hope its my friend".

I used to dream and remember a lot but now it only happens mid-day weekends, when i take naps, and writing after wake up is a disaster.  It doesn't matter if it's weekday or weekend trying to write tired ends up me writing about how tired i am or me writing with my eyes closed which can end up either ok or horribly.

Final thoughts on the Journal: After 41 journal entries i can say....It was a nice experience, i enjoyed it, but i didn't particularly enjoy HAVING to make it.  I think i'll stick to video journals because i feel more comfortable and closer to it alredy, it helps me talk in english and gives me something to watch later on, with a bit more context by looking at my room or my state.

Let's think about "On Looking"

I've been putting this writing off for way too long, I finish this now.

The reason I've been putting this off is because I'm not sure what to talk about here. Its a very interesting read, but it doesn't leave me with much to "think about", well, except for "how do i see the world?" and "How else can i look at it?". That's fine, it's what it's meant to do, everyone that reads it starts wondering this. As interesting as this might be to one self it's just weird to share this with others, without having something concrete to look at together and seeing the differences.

This being said, it did remind me of something very much alike, that portrays a similar message, this one not about looking at stuff differently depending on your past, who you are and what you are doing (which is the main topic in "On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes by Alexandra Horowitz") and more about how we see everything but we're not observing everything.What it reminded me of was of a TEDTalk, where Apollo Robins, known as the best pitpocket in the world talks about misdirection.

The best example of how we don't see everything i can use from this show is this:

You have a phone on you, right?  Probably a smart phone (if not, keep reading, or watch the video at the end).
You probably use this every day, so without looking at it, tell me, tell yourself, think: What app/icon is at the bottom right corner of your phone?

Can you remember? Go check.

If you know 100% that that is what is there, check anyways, you might be surprised, tell me in the comments if you were right, lets do a little experiment.

The best example of how we don't see everything i can use from this show is this: Now, that you've checked, put your phone away...

"You missed that." was the first sentence in "On Looking" and it's perfect.   I can't say for certain that you did, but there's a high probability that you did.
You just looked on your phone, and every phone has the same thing, no matter which one, so now tell me...

 What time is it?

When i first saw this in the TED Talk it made me want to try to look at everything with more detail, not be misdirected, and this is the feeling that I kinda felt while reading "On looking" curiosity.

Final thoughts: "On looking" is good read, but i feel it would have impacted me more if i hadn't gone through something similar as the author. This is strange because sometimes being close to what they're trying to show is better but in this case I just felt like it didn't have much of an impact, but remembering that I looked at things different than others and sharing this with others is the best, and it's making us think about looking, so its fulfilling its purpose.

Click here to watch the TEDTalk, you won't regret it.

Click here to read the excerpt, you wont regret this one either.

Let's think about " A room with a view"

I would like to say i have my thought's all clear about this, but I don't.  I somewhat enjoyed the movie, but I'm not sure what i can say about it.

First of all, for those who never saw the movie, here's a little synopsis I found on IMDB:

It's the Edwardian era. The Honeychurches - Marian Honeychurch and her two just of age children Lucy Honeychurch and Freddy Honeychurch - are a carefree and fun-loving family that live in the country town of Summer Street, Surrey. Regardless, Lucy is a proper young woman. Some can tell by the way she plays Beethoven on the piano that there is a seething passion underneath her proper demeanor. She and her older cousin, her chaperon Charlotte Barlett, who is officious in a slyly undermining way, travel to Florence, Italy for a week-long respite. The Pensione Bertolini where they are staying is popular among British tourists. Among the disparate group of other British guests at the pensione are a Mr. Emerson, who Charlotte considers vulgar because of his forwardness, and his son, the bright but brooding George Emerson. As their stay progresses, George feels that Italian life is opening his eyes to what is important in life, and he feels the same is happening to Lucy. On a group outing, an incident occurs which both Charlotte and Lucy consider improper, which leads to the two leaving Italy early and heading back to England. Shortly thereafter, Lucy gets engaged to the upper crust and passionless Cecil Vyse. And Mr. Emerson moves to Summer Street, with George visiting on the weekends. As George befriends the Honeychurches, Lucy begins to tell a series of lies, mostly to herself, about what and who she really wants for and in her life. - Written by Huggo

 An interesting view, one you don't need a room for, is how classes are presented.  Throughout the whole movie one see's the differences of class between the characters.  Although one can infer they're mostly upper middle class and high class, there are still a lot of differences. For example, the character Cecil Vyse represents more or less what a perfect upperclassman was like, always proper, reading enjoying his perks, while George Emerson, was from a lower class and he enjoyed skinny dipping playing tennis and other activities.

While all of this is presented, there is also the fact that Lucy is a woman and how does this play with everything and everyone.  I found it interesting that she could break up her wedding arrangement with Cecil and get to choose who she loved by the end because knowing how hard women have been treated for years, that she got a choice, even if it's fiction, it is a big deal.

Final thought's: It was a good movie, it feels longer than it actually is, i think it's worth the watch, but not a "Need to watch".  Good exposure of classes and it also gives some power to the female character, so in that perspective it's great.