Taste Differences

Most people who are reading this blog right now won't know what the term "scrilla" means. But most of you will know the word "open-minded". The truth is, these two words go hand-in-hand. See, I have many friends who listen to (I won't use the word ghetto because it's directly racist) "street" rap that definitely isn't..... Mozart. Here is an example of a very popular song that I often hear at my friend's house.

I'm not forcing you to like this song, or even understand it, but I think people who read this blog will just be perplexed at the first noise this video makes (sorry, grandma). But seriously, this truly tests your open-mindness. If you can listen to this song, and at least try to understand why over 3 million people listen to this, you can say you're truly an open-minded person. Most (or at least me, at the age of 13), would shut away this song immediately, almost to the point of being offended by the artist's musical expression. But because I have friends that I care about, and that I support despite our cultural taste differences, I don't judge them for listening to this music. So that's what I'm trying to get at. Please don't judge others because of their tastes. I used to do this, and it's really not ok. Be open to different EVERYTHING!

P.S: "scrilla" means money, in rap slang, if you needed to know

P.S.S:  Really sorry about my "Discovery Challenge", will probably be up by tomorrow

P.S.S.S: Have a good day !

Robin Williams and Suicide

So one of the most appreciated actors of all time, Robin Williams, died a week or two ago. Let me start this blogpost by saying that he was in fact, a great actor, and will be missed. That being said, I mean no disrespect to Robin Williams himself or his family by saying that suicide is never a healthy, reasonable problem-solving measure and that it is SELFISH. I've seen many posts arguing that suicide is your last inalienable right, that people's lives should be in their own hands, etc. There's even people who are suggesting policies of legalizing fatal doses of barbiturates for people who want them.

Here is a post on reddit in which the poster defends suicide.

"Our society has deemed that suicide is illegal, immoral, selfish and should be stopped by any means possible once identified as a possible outcome. People are placed in a position where they must defend their sanity in order to prevent being locked up, restrained and/or drugged.

This causes a conflict for anyone who chooses to commit suicide while trying to minimize the negative impact on their friends and family. If a person were to make arrangements to end their life in a way that did not leave a mess, arrange to have their body removed, and arrange to settle their financial obligations prior to committing their final act, they would then be targeted for incarceration, restraints and psychological testing and at no time allowed to do what they could have done in secret.

What we are saying is that the only rational way to commit suicide is to hide it from society which necessitates leaving an extreme amount of burden on those remaining."

The problem is that the vast majority of people who commit or attempt to commit suicide are under the influence of something, be it severe mental illness, substances, anger, whatever, that they would not have chosen to kill themselves if they were not in those circumstances.

It's often said that people who try and fail to kill themselves often are thankful they were not successful. I have a very good friend who tried to commit suicide, and he is thankful he didn't. My friend, and everyone who has attempted suicide, realize their suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

This is why we as a society do our best to treat those people and help prevent them from killing themselves. Same reason why, when someone comes into the hospital in an obviously altered mental state, they can have procedures performed without their consent, because they are obviously not of sound mind to be making decisions for themselves.

Again, I mean no disrespect to Robin Williams. If you have ever thought about suicidal thoughts, please please call the suicide hotline: 1-800-273-8255  or chat someone online: https://www.imalive.org/

You're not alone :)

Discover. Underated, un-seen, or just not loved enough; My New Challenge

So the other day I was having a conversation with one of my good friends who is a HUGE moviegoer, and we started to talk about underrated films. I started to name some of my favorite underrated movies; Rushmore, Drive, Rubber, etc. My friend, knowing a lot about films, said those were OVERRATED to his standards. He then started to name movies I had never even heard of, truly undiscovered films. So then I started to think and think and I came up with my new challenge and project: "Discover."

Discover is going to be my new thing for my blogspot. I'm going to watch 13 of the best underrated movies ever made and review them for my blog. My goal is to bring these poor unloved movies back to life for others to enjoy, like yourself. There will be a schedule for these movies so you can watch and discuss these films with me. SO. The first movie we will be watching and discussing will be The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. This film will be reviewed on MONDAY. So you have the whole 3-day weekend to watch it.

I mainly got my list of movies from a reddit thread in /r/TrueFilm, but my friend recommended me some of them. WATCH AWAY!
See you on monday.

Anger and Aikido

If you don't live under a rock, then perhaps you might have noticed that there's a lot of angry people right now. Everyday that I read, listen, or watch the news, I just see people getting angry over each other and terrible, disgusting things happen. The missouri shooting and its protests, the Israeli-Palestine conflict, disputes over feminism and racial status, and more that I would rather just not name. I recently took a decision to enroll in Aikido classes (a martial art) and while the class' main objective is to learn self-defense, it has also taught me about my mind, body, and spirit.

And while yes, I love to show off my awesome ninja moves to my parents and my friends, there's also a simple and natural philosophy to Aikido that follows many of the same beliefs as Buddhism. These include harmonizing with, rather than confronting, the attacker, acting decisively and being present "in the moment", and letting techniques flow naturally by being in tune with the universe. My instructor always tells me to take these ideas further than the mat. Wether the attacker represents a homework problem or a mugger, Aikido (for the three classes that I've been to), has taught me valuable life lessons about the mind, body and spirit. 

Now that I'm done being all "Zen" and philosophical, what am I getting at? Well, all these angry and sometimes nasty people we often see in the news and media should all calm down and learn some lessons from aikido. 

shibarakushite kara!


(I have no idea what that means)

Felicidad!

I made this neat little video for the organization my mom works for.
Check them out, it's a super cool org that helps spread happiness and solutions to challenges through creative mediums and tools.

http://felicidadparatodos.cl/

I know it's kinda short and lame, but I only had like 2 hours to make it

Remember When this Blog Was Meant to Help Aspiring Writers?

Yeah, me neither. But recently I found a website that was so tempting to post and goes back to the true roots of this "blog", so I am sharing it with you today. The website is called Hemingway, after the magnificent writer and journalist. The purpose of the site, as described by itself, is to "make your writing bold and clear". You paste something you've been working on and the website automatically highlights words, sentences, and paragraphs that are unclear, hard to read, and other errors. The site even calculates the readability of your work through an educational grade system.

To try it out, I pasted in what I've written above. Hopefully my writing isn't TOO atrocious.

Here are the results:

Hmm... Interesting. The readability of my writing is 8th grade-level. I'm not sure as to feel good or bad about this rating, yet the website tells me "good". I have written a sentence that is a tad long, and ironically, it's the one where I'm explaining the grammatical errors. A few adverbs here and there, but other than that, I feel like I did pretty well. I'm not sure If I would use this for school essays, but it is definitely a good tool for learning about sentence structure and making your writing "clear", which is the ultimate goal for the site.

So basically don't take any writing advice from me if you're older than 12.

Here is the website, peace out!
http://www.hemingwayapp.com/

EAGLESMERE 2014

Hey all, so as you may have noticed: ITS SUMMER! For a week, I went to my friend's lake house and we had tons of fun. Here is a neat little video I barely edited (sorry!)

Why are we so obsessed with the thought of future human despair?

Don't you just love going to the movies? A huge screen, some overpriced soda, a (semi) comfortable seat, and the smell of salty popcorn. There's only one thing that I like more than the essence of the movie theatre other than the film itself - the trailers. They tell you what movies to be excited for and what movies to avoid. Recently, though, they've been the latter. This is mainly because society (mostly hollywood) has a very recent and strange cultural obsession over human dystopia. There are countless TV shows, movies, games, and even MUSIC that all revolve around the idea of a future disaster full of human desperation and hopelessness. I went to see Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (a dystopian film) the other day and the trailers I saw made me sick, not because they were violent or scary, but because there were so many that were all exactly the same. It's such a dragged out concept that I'm so tired of. But while thinking it over in the toilet, I saw a deeper side to these unoriginal forms of entertainment. I think it's actually a good platform for looking at our society, as a mirror. We  feel watched and monitored. School shootings are normal and the people who are supposed to be in charge don’t seem to be doing anything to monitor gun distribution. There are drones in the sky. Abnormal storms happen and those in power still deny that climate change is a problem. A corrupt, multi-billionaire organization organizes an enormous sport event millions watch. Our own reality often seems like something out of a dystopian film. So I end the blog post and answer the question
by posing a different question: Have our popular escapism become nightmarish speculations of the present?

Just a quick sketch

Remember to click on the image if you can't see it!

Ernest Hemingway Quotes, Plotting Stories, and Arrested Development

If you don't know who Ernest Hemingway was, I suggest you go to your closest bookstore, ask for an Ernest Hemingway book, get yourself a cup of tea/coffee, and spend the rest of the day reading. He is a classic of American literature. He is praised for all of his works, winning various prizes and honors like the Pulitzer and the Nobel Prize for literature. Simply put, if you love books and writing, you should listen to his words of wisdom carefully. Here’s seven of his (millions of!) quotes I that find most inspirational.

1. "There is no friend as loyal as a book"

2. "My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way."

3. "The first draft of anything is shit."

4. "Write drunk. Edit sober."

5."There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."

6."As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand."

7. "All you have to do is write one true sentence. The truest sentence that you know."

I find all of them pretty great, and they have really inspired me (don't worry, I don't drink) to write more, and better. Also, I found this link through reddit, which explains the two ways of plotting a story, which are both very useful, but I found the second way (architect) to be more sophisticated, yet very effective. If you're too lazy to click on the link and read it, here is the overall order of how an architect story should go:

• Beginning
• “Uncomfortable” event
• Plot turn 1
• Midpoint
• “Everything’s wrong” event
• Plot turn 2
• Resolution

I have also been watching Arrested Development with my mom, and we both find it hilarious. But I think the reason why everybody loves it so much (well most of it is the hilarity) is because it uses the architect story plot very intensely. Arrested Development follows various different characters, all with their own problems and sort of mini-plots, that all lead to the resolution, and somehow they manage to connect all those mini-plots into one huge problem that later gets resolved.

Anyways, I hope you get inspired by Hemingway and write your very own story using the architect and gardener way and later watch some Arrested Development.

Have a good day!

Sam

TED Talks

If you ever have an extra 18 to 20 minutes in your life, I recommend you watch or listen to a TED talk. They have taught me a whole lot, and the stories coming from the people that speak them are incredible, and range from innovative to emotional.

So if you ever find yourself at the writer's block (see what I did there?) just listen to these 6 awesome TED talks about storytelling, and what makes a great story. They do actually help, and I find all of them sort of amazing and my role models. (Isabel Allende for my stories, J.J Abrams for my film making, and Scott McCloud for my comics)

So when you go on a road trip with your family, just bring your iPod with some TED talks downloaded, and listen for a good hour.

Have a frantastic day!


Sam

A Note on Violence, and the Gun That Triggers it

I'm fairly late to the party, but recently Jim Carrey decided that he's not going to support "Kick Ass 2". If you haven't seen or heard about Kick Ass, it's a pretty violent movie which focuses on an anti hero, who is basically a teenager with no experience in crime-figthing that goes on a mission to be a superhero. I actually loved the movie and the comic book that it was based on, and this summer when I heard there would be a sequel, I was super excited. Even more excited when I heard Jim Carrey would be in it. I'm actually a huge Jim Carrey fan, and have watched all his movies, interviews, stand up comedies, and videos. But I just can't stand his statement and arrogance to not support the movie because he thinks the movie would trigger violence, leading to elementary school shootings and such.

Chloe Grace Moretz, who plays Hit Girl in the film, spoke against Jim Carrey. "It's a movie," Moretz recently told a reporter. "If you are going to believe and be affected by an action film, you shouldn't go to see 'Pocahontas' because you are going to think you are a Disney princess." If a violent movie influences you to hurt others, you were a psychopath way before watching the movie. Something was bound to trigger you either way. Mark Millar, the guy who wrote the comic book, also shared his opinions on Jim Carrey's decision. "For your main actor to publicly say, 'This movie is too violent for me' is like saying, 'This porno has too much nudity. We'll have to go and see this now.'

  Besides, Kick-Ass involves comic violence in which vigilantes kill bad guys. Surely a film that involves the torture of innocents, like the main character, is more of a concern. Anyways, maybe I'm making too much of a big deal. Jim Carrey is an amazing actor, but that doesn't mean I have to agree with his opinions. It's the exactly like the Clint Eastwood situation. I think people these days just need to focus on the work itself, not anything else, and not judge the movie because the actors spoke against it, or because it's coincidental that a terrible shooting happened during the movie's production, or because the director has different political views.

I'm getting a little too far from the topic (like most of my blog posts) but I think the bottom line is well stated by a reddit comment "the bottomer line is that Jim Carrey is a known bipolar whose emotions fluctuate greatly. That's part of what makes him such an amazing character and actor. In short, to an extent, the dude is crazy. Disagree with him but don't hate him for it. It's his view point even if it's not mainstream or even politically correct."

I hope you watch Kick Ass. It's pretty violent though.

Have a good day,
Sam

An Excuse to Playing Video Games

If your parents ever tell you to stop playing so many video games, just show them this article. I did. One thing's for sure, video games have really enhanced my procrastination techniques.

Writing Prompts/Sentences

The worst part of writing almost anything, especially fictional stories, is the beginning. You have to try to make it simple, smart, original, interesting, and make your audience wanting for more in one sentence or two. No pressure, right? Well, I have made it easy for you, my friend. I will give you a really good starter and you get to write the story. One of my newest personal hobbies is taking a good starter and thinking of the millions of possibilities the story could be shaped and written. So, without further ado, here is a list of some awesome sentences that could make a good story.

•   “Samantha always felt awkward talking to friends at their own funerals”

•   “Harvey was insane, but he wasn't hurting anybody”

•   “She dreamed of black birds up on the clear blue sky” 

•   “I would like to apologize for my behavior thus far.”

•   “It wasn’t much- but it was everything”

•   “It was a little rock, just like any other floating through space.”

•   “As the stranger stepped into the town of Silari, the wind and the desert started whispering Alizee's name.”

•   “Besides the sound of bacon sizziling the room was silent. Just six months ago a silent room this close to the hallway was hard to come by.”

•   "Mr. John Warren just wanted to eat his sandwich."

•   "They say your whole life flashes before your eyes when you die. What bullshit.”

•   “The nuclear flash burnt a hole into one of Albert's retinas, which was fortunate, because he had been searching in vain for a place to hide the secret formula for the perfect martini."

•   "Long fingernails impatiently tapped against the wooden window frame."

•   “Nothing is free: warmth costs what the fire burns.”

•   “In the face of an unanswerable question, some need an unquestionable answer.”

•   “One morning, Don Pedro came to understand there is no distance like the lack of it.”

•   “Elizabeth, I killed daddy.”

•   “When the hardest person to live with is yourself, how much more are you willing to take?”

•   “Receipts filled his pockets, like tokens to his regrets spelled out in numbers.”

I hope that’s enough to get you started on writing short stories. And in case I don’t see ya, good morning, good evening, and good night! (Truman show really is a great movie. Highly recommend watching it)

Disclaimer: I didn't make up all of these. Some are mine, some of them are from books, poetry, movies and the internet. 

Poverty

I'm incredibly lucky to have enough money for food, shelter, water, and even a private school. I'm more than lucky. Sometimes people forget how lucky they are, and they take for granted their gift of having enough money to survive and have a stable, economically, happy life.

I found this blog the other day (it's about what to shop when you're broke like a canyon) and I found it incredibly fascinating and made me think for a really long time. What really intrigued me about the post that I found most particular was the part where she explained how buying small luxuries keeps you sane. "Again, living without this stuff makes you feel poor. Sometimes you need to have some small luxuries to feel human, and personally, my need to feel human is more important than my need for broccoli." I'm not sure about you, but that makes me think a whole lot.

I suggest you read the whole thing, and after that read this reddit thread that also makes you think... about humanity and poverty.

Whilst reading both, listen to this masterpiece of a song that goes along well with reading about this subject.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbO2_077ixs

Sorry for the short and bitter post this was, I've been kinda down this past week or so, but don't fret, it will pass.

See you all next time,
Sam

Graduating, Being Open-Minded and One Piece

Now that I'm graduating Middle School, passing on to a new school with new everything, I think it's time to reflect. In less than 5 days, I will graduate my 3 years of being a pre-teen and according to movies and books, will have the worst/best time of my life the following 4 years. I have moved schools MANY times, and I'm quite used to it, so making new friends will not be hard for me. And every time I move schools I learn something valuable. But this school has taught me the possibly most important value that grown adults still don't have, which is to be open-minded. Living in a city like D.C, you see diplomats and politicians almost everywhere you go, (it's a small city, ok!) where I would say only 1/3 of them are open-minded. I think that being open-minded can really solve some of the nation's problems. If more people in Congress are open-minded, the more agreements there will be, leading to less problems! But, there are still people who refuse to be open-minded the smallest bit, like people who believe in conservatism. But this could be a whole different post (in fact, I made one about open-mindedness), and I don't care much for politics, so let's move onto my point. This school has taught me so much, and I will appreciate and remember that when I get older. The past years I have learnt some things about the world around me, particularly myself, and to opening my mind (see what I did there?) to new ideas. Thank you, Alice Deal, for an amazing three years. 

Now, being open-minded isn't only about politics, religion, or opinions. I recently started watching this anime show called "One Piece", which is surprisingly amazing, and it's one of the only anime I've ever watched, considering I'm very new to this "genre". If you're not familiar with anime, it's Japanese (or Asian? I don't know) cartoons, but they're less cartoony as Looney Tunes, and more of what I call art. Each frame is like it's own masterpiece, and the creativity as well as the character development is both amazingly well written and original. I recommend it very much, but if after 15 episodes you still don't like it, oh well, being open-minded doesn't mean you have to agree with me or others. It's about listening to other people and being understanding of what they say/do. So go out there and do something and do something different today, even if it's something extraordinary like traveling to India or as small as watching all 7 seasons of an extraordinary anime.

Peace out! 

-Sam :D

Some cool links:

One Piece fo free: http://www.onepieceofficial.com

How to be open-minded: http://www.wikihow.com/Be-Open-Minded

Conservatism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_in_the_United_States

An open-minded article about not being open-minded (woah... meta): http://gideonz.tripod.com/articles/OpenMind.htm

Holocaust Poem

Growing Up

Even though I'm only 14, people are already starting to plan out their future, what they want to be when they grow up, where to go to college, and such. I find all of that kind of stupid, knowing exactly how your life is going to go and all of that. Though I have to admit, I still really don't know what I'm going to be, or exactly who I am going to be. I remember when I was a kid, all I wanted to do was to be a taxi driver, or a garbage truck guy. I was unaware, of course of the economic factor of those jobs, and how those jobs were not jobs that I should supposedly "dream"of.

 Looking back at that, I find it sad that my dream of driving through the city were crushed by the stereotypical "I want to be a lawyer!" or "I want to be a doctor!" type of kids that told me that their parents taught them about money. And I think whoever wants to be a taxi driver or a garbage truck guy should be one if he wants to. Society has built this mindset of lawyers and doctors that are happy because they gains lots of money, but money can't buy happiness. What I'm getting at is that you shouldn't want a job just for money. Do it because you like it, or else what's the point in life? Money?

Trophy

This one's kinda dark. If you don't understand the joke, go suck a duck.

Also, a lot of people tell me they can't see the comic. Click to enlarge it! Have a good week, guys.

Two Comics in one?! It must be my birthday!