20. My favorite movies

Some of my favorite movies include: Man on Fire, Crash, Lion King, I-Robot, and Iron Man. I know most of these movies are pretty recently made. I do appreciate older movies and in fact some of them are among my favorites too. Despite that I do prefer movies more recently made because they appeal more to my need of believable special effects. Not saying that I believe a man can fly, but if I can see the way his body lays flat because he is really on a table with a green background, well in my mind that just ruined the movie for me. There is also the language barrier. If I hear someone refer to butter as axle grease, my mind just wont let it go. Language is subjective to both culture and time period. I feel more comfortable watching a movie that I understand. I understand that there is the argument that we should get out of our comfort zone and experience new things, however that is not why I watch movies for. I watch movies to be entertained and relaxed. Otherwise I would watch documentaries. To be considered one of my favorites a movie has to have a couple of things. Good special effects, a good and ORIGINAL plot, and some jokes. One reason old movies don’t appeal to me as much is because most of their plots are cliched. Jokes are important in any type of genre, be tragedy, drama, horror, or of course comedy. Without jokes a movie is just boring.

19. Word Bank Poem

He danced next to her.

She slowly rotated next to him.

She looked beautiful.

Hot and sweaty.

He looked sexy.

Lean and masculine.

He glanced at her.

She stepped to him.

Fell in dance.

Endlessly, peacefully melted.

18. Blogging

In my opinion, blogging is probably a wonderful therapy device. Had I come to know it under different conditions, I might have sincerely liked it. Unfortunately, being an assignment, I have come to detest it. In my mind it has come to be associated with homework and being forced to do it. Initially, I was pleased because I like to write and express myself even though I had never blogged before. I even enjoyed for the first couple of assignments and tried to articulate myself in a meaningful yet personal manner. However, as time progressed I began to feel a strain in having to do one every day. I understand writing when you have something to say or when you have an opinion on something prompted, but when you are just writing purely as a response to a prompt it seems more like dribble then actual writing. I am not bashing blogging at all and give props to those who can manage to do it every day on their own accord. What I am saying is that blogging as forced labor rather than pleasure does not have the same effect and is rather boring. Even now it is a bit difficult to keep going to the 250 minimum word limit when I have said everything I need to say and have nothing left to say (or should I say type). This kind of writing never makes it into the great works of literature, it just sits there. A writing assignment forgotten in history.

17. “Sing, sing a song…”

What has always been one of my talents is writing poetry. As a child I actually had my own anthology of over a hundred poems. I entered a couple of contest but was discouraged when I figured most of them were actually just shams. Also, I was just a kid (and a boy I should mention) so I was a bit hesitant to go publicly to my peers about writing poetry. Peer pressure is a b… bad thing, sometimes. Now I know that writing poetry is nothing to be ashamed of. However as time passed by I just drifted away from it. When I was younger most of my inspiration came from the dream of the perfect girl. Mostly they were written about a girl that I thought didn’t exist. None of my ex-girlfriends ever met the bar. However, when I met my wife I was more entranced by her that I felt it was more important to spend time with her then to write about her. However I feel that I still have talent no matter how latent I have let it become. Let me give it a try:

Born in a world with unfair,

 I do not cry for what could have been.

Let no man say I do not care,

But I understand the hearts of men.

 

 Man is not inherently evil,

Nor does he have a saving grace.

 His will is simply feeble,

Whenever it comes to his own place.

 

A father however, is not just a man.

 His child is always more important then air.

I do not cry, because I do all I can,

To protect my child from this world unfair.

 

 

Angel Castaneda

07/01/2009

16. Stress Relief

My method to relieve stress is based on one of my favorite songs, “Don’t worry, be happy. Cause every little thing is going to be O.K.” With all the school work and trials of fatherhood, I sometimes need to just relax. I like to either just watch movies or go and play sports. Often times of times I like to do both. Reason being is because after all the cerebral exhaustion caused by school work, it works well to go “brain dead” and rejuvenate my mind. With sports, I feel that a lot of times people don’t feel satisfied with their lives regardless of stress because they don’t exercise. With physical exhaustion you can get all that extra anxiety out of you. It is common knowledge that after exercise you get more relaxed and calm. Also, it is not too bad for your health. All the meanwhile, while you are doing this the most important thing is too relax. It does no good to watch movies or play sports if the whole time you are there, you are mentally freaking out about whatever school work you have. It negates the positive effects because you are sill stressing out the whole time. Some people just can not forget about their problems. For those people I just feel bad. For everyone else, what I recommend doing is: don’t just stop caring about your problems, because you might not come back to resolve them, rather just tell yourself that you are going to take a break, and will come back to finish it after you have relieved your stress.

15. Assessing ourselves

Since January my life has not changed dramatically. Of course I have grown in the natural course and have learned in the usual way. I go to school and that takes up half of my day. The rest of my day is spent taking care of my daughter and doing my homework. In a way, my life has been pretty monotonous. I had proposed to myself as a new year’s resolution that I would stick to school and keeping my grades up because I have a habit of slacking off in school because I know that I can pass with my intelligence. I believe that I have kept my promise to myself of keeping my grades up, but not without a lot of hard work. However, I do feel that I failed in keeping another promise that I had made to myself of starting to work out again. I used to be real fit when I was in high school but with the demands of a girlfriend, daughter, and college I have the regular old excuse of not having enough time. I feel that for the time being, it is a fair trade-off because I can always get fit later on and the sooner I finish school, the sooner I can get back to working out. Through it all, I feel that I have been doing pretty well with my life and have been keeping on track. I am smarter through everyday experiences and the education from school. I am stronger with my family by my side. I will keep going.

14. Enlarging Your World

For this blog, I decided to use Ms. Goldfarb’s blog Enlarging Your World. I chose this blog mainly because I believe that you can tell a lot about people from the questions that they ask. For example, when Ms. Goldfarb says that she wants to broaden our horizon and then ask us to read any blog anywhere in the world, you can deduce that she believes that by reading and relating to other people’s personal thoughts we can learn from their experiences. Also, by asking us to note how we would react, she also believes that we may be able to learn something about ourselves. I find the fact that she cares enough about their students to encourage them to try new things and learn through individual thought, rather then just being taught in the classroom, makes her one of the more admiral teachers I’ve heard off. Also, because she appreciates the art of writing, I feel she is something of a kindred spirit. In making us write blogs, she opened the world of blogging to me. Before I took this class I had never read or written a blog before. To me it seemed that to write them seemed frivolous, nobody really cares what you thought about stuff. To read them was boring, I didn’t really care what other people thought about stuff. But after Mrs. Goldfarb’s assignments to read blogs, I find that you can actually find personal accounts of things that you just could not imagine happens. This in turn leads to introspect and learning about ones self.

13. Connecting

I recently read a fellow students blog about what he wants to be when he grows up. Out of respect for him I shall not mention his name in case he wouldn’t want that. He stated that he wanted to be a superhero when he grew up. That got me to thinking (reminiscingactually) about how that was exactly one of the things I wanted to be when I was little. I use to daydream about getting superpowers and helping people. However, was also something else that I remembered that scared the daylight out of me. In my dreams I would always go corrupt and use the superpowers for my own personal gain. It was never intentional to go corrupt but it always happened. Whether it was stealing money from banks or big conglomerates (who had insurance) to give to my family (or other poor people) when they needed it, to just doing stuff to impress somegirl(s) instead of saving lives. Reading that blog and the realization of what I used to daydream about made me wonder if I or anybody else could handle superpowers without ever going corrupt. Just look at people who go into power and the things that they do to stay in power. Now imagine if they had power that not even mob rule could rid them of it. A few people have done the impossible of giving up immense power (George Washington, Cinncinatus, etc.), but even they were not faced with superpowers. What it all comes down to is, does absolute power truly corrupt absolutely?

12. Great films

Driving Miss Daisy

To be honest after all the hype I had heard about this movie and how good it was, I was a bit disappointed. Not only because I prefer movies where stuff blows up (and I’m not talking about a car crash with no huge explosion), but also because I was not impressed with the manner in which the message was presented. Racism is a big part of this movie, even if it is at times more subtle then not, but it was nothing new to scores of hundreds of other movies trying to present the same message. I’m not saying it didn’t have its moments, the part where Idella dies got to me, but it could have been much better. There were parts that I found too boring. Despite that, I did find that the characters were very multi-dimensional and for the most part added a little something to the film. The acting was also decent, which in my eyes saved the movie from being a total drag. However since there is a generational gap since this movie was made and I watched it, it might not impact me as much as it might to someone who actually had to live through an era where racism was alive and thriving. Either way, I am glad I at least watched the movie and my perspective was widened, even if only by the narrowest of gaps.

11. Soundtrack of My Life

Waking up: Anywhere-112: What can I say, I already have a kid so I really understand this song.
First Day of School:Me and My Girlfriend-2Pac: I always go through new things with my girl, she is my whistleing in the cemetary.
Falling in Love:Many Men-50 cent: This song reminds me of middle school because it always came on the radio then. 
Fight Song:I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing- Aerosmith: Reminds me of that movie Armagedon
Breaking Up:Karma- Alicia Keys: I like the message of this song, besides it was real popular when I was a kid.
Prom:Smooth criminal- Alien Ant Farm: I just like the way the song sounds.
Life:Gives you Hell-All American Rejects: Nice breakup song, I always thought so anyways
Mental Breakdown: Angelito Vuela- Don Omar: It has my name in it, so it had to be awesome
Driving:Pobre Diabla- I first heard this song and was sure it had to have some hidden satanic message but after trying to figure it out to no avail, I gave up and as an apology to the song I keep it in my playlist. Besides, it’s a good song
Flashback:Fu*k you- Eamon: Who doesn’t love this song?
Wedding:Perdoname- Eddy Lover y la factoria: My girl always loved this song so after a while it started to grow on me.
Birth Of Child:Blue- Eiffel65: This song makes me happy
Final Battle:Paitently Waiting- Eminem: My brother used to listen to this song all the time when I was little
Death Scene:Paralyzer-finger eleven: Reminds me of my old boss because he used to blare it up all the time
Funeral Song:Last resort- papa roach: You probably sang along to this one all time too when it came out
End Credits:Dreaming of You- Selena: Reminds me of the selena movie