Blog #32

Today I started my new job at Tommy’s pizza restaurant. I used to work at Marc’s Grocery Store for the past couple of years, but I had to get a new job for college because classes went later into the day. I am very glad I was forced to get this new job though, because judging by my first day I am going to like this job much better. My shift was from 2pm to around 1130pm tonight. Although that is a long shift I don’t mind, when I go to work I would like to get as many hours in as I can in that shift. And my old job consisted of stocking all the shelves, running the cashier (which is much harder at a grocery store than other stores), and helping out with getting the carts they have. Now I simply work the line, which basically means making the pizzas and putting them in the oven. So, I get to simply stand there and work with some food, next to a few other dudes. Its nice because it takes literally no mental or physical effort and you can talk the entire time to your co-workers. It did take some skill to get used to getting the pizzas right, but I can tell within a few weeks I will have it down pretty well. Also today they told me was considered busy, and I never felt overwhelmed by the amount of orders I had to get. But the best part of the job - FREE FOOD. As long as you are working you can make anything on the menu, or get any of their drinks and have it right then. There is no going on break, you just take it when you want. At my old job I used to get in a bunch of trouble for having ‘free food’, despite the fact that it was a grocery store. And you were strictly limited to a 30 minute break. At this job you basically are on break anytime it isn’t busy. That’s it for tonight I am going to bed.

Blog #30

    Today I am going to write about old video games I used to play.  My friend reminded me of this idea today when we were hanging out.  I used to play a game called Twisted Metal, which was basically a bunch of decked out cars that shot missiles and guns and you raced/fought to win the game.  I always used to play as a character called Sweet Tooth, who was a crazy clown man who drove a creepy ice cream truck.  He had special heat seeking missiles and a machine gun.  This whole game was very violent, but I played it all the time in elementary school.  Another game I loved when I was growing up was Super Smash Brothers.  That was basically a game with a bunch of random characters from other games, and you got to pick which one you wanted and fought them.  It sounds simple, but with a lot of people playing it can be pretty intense.  I thought I had more to say about that topic, but since I don’t I will talk about how my friend is coming from home from California tonight at 10:00.  He has been gone for almost 6 months and I’m pretty excited to see him.  He saved up his own money to get home a few weeks earlier than when his parents were going to fly him home.  He really wanted to make it back for Halloween, and now I feel like I got to find something really fun for all of us to do since he’s back.  That’s about it for today.

Blog 29*

                The hardest part of this paper for me has definitely been the ‘bridge’ area.  Connecting my real world connections – about how too much responsibility and too much stress can have a negative effect on someone, and does not always pressure them to get more done - It can do the opposite in many cases, especially with learning.  But connecting that back to the show I analyzed (Buffy, the Vampire Slayer must give up her high school crush because she can’t endanger him with her lifestyle of… Slaying Vampires of course.)  is just too much of a stretch I’ve found,  especially when I attempt to go into detail about any real world connections which tend to be very specific.  And obviously there aren’t any real world examples of people being overburdened with the pressure of fighting zombies, or being any kind of superhero.  It seems that if I go too far to the side of Buffy’s situation - ‘looking for people who are greatly stressed because of the insane responsibility their jobs carry’ I steer clear of any kind of scholarly article, with reputable facts and studies.  Which is really what I feel is necessary to make an argument.  On the flip-side,  If I go in the direction of focusing on the scientific side of stress and pressure and show all of it’s negative effects with scholarly articles,  my paper feels like it has only a vague connection to the show which started the paper in the first place.  If I can’t find some solid bridge to connect these with scholarly sources, I will probably lean towards the argument side of my paper and unfortunately neglect the Episode Analysis part.

Blog 28: One Day Late

This is my “Blog about anything” but it is one day late.  Did anybody notice that the title rhymes?  I thought about writing a whole blog in rhymes, but that would take a serious amount of work.  And I haven’t written anything with rhyming every since… I learned about Haiku’s.  Haiku’s are an asian poetry style (I’m pretty sure), and they’re basically a god send for anyone who can’t rhyme, or write some really deep poem stuff.  They start out with 5 syllables on the first line, then 7 on the next, and back down to 5 for the ending line.  Yup.  Three lines are all you need.   And because they are an accepted type of poetry, nobody can call you lazy.  I would have really liked to be the guy who invented Haiku’s though -  I’m all about the Haiku’s.  And it wouldn’t have been that hard either; you just would have to be born a really long time ago.  That’s how I feel with a lot of inventions.  If I was just born before all the good ideas were taken, I could have come up with a thousand things.  I know it’s not that easy, but that is just how I feel.  I try to remember quotes like hindsight is 20/20, and this one quote I read made by the president of an American patent company sometime in the 1900’s – before just about anything we use today was invented.  He said the same thing I did – all the good ideas are taken.  Surely, they are not, but it does make you wonder what else we could possibly invent?

Blog 27

While I was deciding on what I would write 250 words about today, I googled ‘Something to write 250 words about‘. Before I could find any solid ideas to write 250 words on, I came across a web article about an Australian man who wrote a book on how to write 480 words about anything. I read further, and I thought it was a pretty ridiculous book idea already, and found out that it was a book about nothing. Basically, this Australian man wrote hundreds of 480 word articles on completely random and almost nonsensical things - just to write 480 words. Then I decided that that was definitely the way to approach the assignment, and tried to think of my own ridiculous topics. It was much harder than I anticipated though. My creativity definitely took a blow from this challenge, and I regretted my condescending attitude towards the man and his idea. I found it very hard to write about any topic besides this one that I am now, because I guess I didn’t have anything else really going on in my head. That’s a little sad. He had ideas like, going around and throwing pies at famous politicians, or ‘protecting your children from Snow White’. I wondered even what he had to say on a few of the topics listed. I had nothing to say about those things, and not much more to say about many other things. All I had to say was about this subject, and I’m running out already, thank god I just hit 250 words about fifteen words ago.

Blog #15: Research Ideas

The episode I will be using for my research paper I think will give me a lot of research options. As I already talked about in my blog, it deals with a theme that applies to everyone. With more power comes more responsibility. I think this is a great starting point for my research, because it definitely is a good lesson to learn as well as it being relatable to a new coming college student taking on more responsibility, and power as well. Also, in this episode the major ’high school life’ lesson to be learned where she simply cannot balance all of her responsibilities: handling schoolwork, spending time with friends, relationships with boys, and of course being a superhero. This is also very relatable and I think can lead to a large amount of articles on the stress of modern life and teen life in particular With this in mind, I decided to narrow my topic of research to the responsibilities and pressures of college students especially. I’m not sure if I will have to broaden or narrow my topic in any ways, but it is flexible and it is a very relevant issue as well. This research idea was easy for me to come up with and so I will cut my blog short this time of 250 words. Sorry.

Blog 14: Never Kill a Boy On the First Date

In this episode of Buffy, the 'lesson to be learned' was one which I was familiar with actually because of the movie Spiderman. Buffy has to directly confront the problem that she cannot lead a normal teenage life if she is going to embrace her destiny as the slayer. I was reminded by Spiderman because Peter Parker suffers the exact same dilemma where he struggles to keep his college and social lives together due to being a superhero. They also made their so far trademark connection to teenage life as Buffy is a teenage girl struggling to keep together all of her responsibilities. Because in high school teenagers often struggle with the increase in responsibility.
The episode consists of a new character - Owen - who Buffy in time develops a crush for. Meanwhile, the vampires have a new plot to create an ‘Anointed One’ - some monster who would surely reek havoc on Sunnydale. Buffy plans a date with Owen, but can’t make it because she must fight off the rising of the Anointed One. (Her greater responsibility gets in the way of her normal life.) Owen follows Buffy not realizing the danger, and is almost killed. Only to be saved by Buffy, and Owen’s reaction is not quite what I expected. Instead of being terrified, or completely ignorant like most not-main characters. He embraces the ‘vampire world’ and wants more. But Buffy realizes by involving herself with him she is putting him into to much danger, and she tells him they cannot be together. This directly parallels the first and second movie of Spiderman. Maybe later on it will parallel the third and they will be able to be together?
This episode has a worthy lesson to be learned, and I can’t state it better than the quote from Spiderman - ‘With great power comes great responsibility”

Blog 13: Teacher's Pet

The beginning of the fourth episode in season 1, ‘Teacher’s Pet” begins abruptly with Xander saving Buffy from a vampire for a twist. Throughout all the previous episodes the other characters seemed virtually powerless to fighting other vampires. After this he even more abruptly plays a guitar solo and kisses Buffy. The viewer finds out this is all a dream and I really like this technique for an intro they used. In the previous episodes the introductions seemed to much more foreshadow, quite clearly, what would be the conflict and resolution throughout the episodes. So I was already more interested than in previous episodes.
Quickly though, the viewer is introduced to what is obviously the antagonist in this epsidoe, a new teacher ‘Natalie French’. She seems to have an unorthodox fascination with Praying Mantis’ - and although this may not be obvious - I quickly inferred that she would be a Praying Mantis like monster which would then feed on individuals throughout the episode, unless Buffy could save them. My theory became more obvious as there was an obvious over exaggerated attraction from all the young boys to this new teach ‘Miss French’.
The next part of the episode followed the same formula as the previous episodes where Buffy encounters incidents in which she confirms the antagonist, but there is no other character there to confirm it.
She identifies this monster as the “She-Mantis”, which does indeed prey on young boys to eat, much like a vampire. They use then a character introduced earlier, which is a vampire. Even this vampire fears the Praying Mantis, which I though was odd. As the title of the show is focused around Vampires, and they still fear the next monster to be introduced in the episode.
The other unique attribute of this episode was the interaction between the character Angel and Buffy. Angel gives Buffy another cryptic warning, and also offers her him his jacket. After this there are several clues that Buffy has an attraction to this character Angel.

Blog #11 Episode 3 Buffy 'Witch'

This episode is called witch, and as you might guess Buffy must fight a witch. She first discovers there may be a witch when Buffy tries out for the cheerleading squad. At the tryouts, one girls’ hands explode in fire, and then Buffy knows something is up. The viewer is given another hint there is a witch, with the image of a brewing cauldron, though no character is revealed. I do not like how obvious the foreshadowing is in this episode and the one previous. The viewer is introduced to another teenage girl, Amy, trying out for the cheerleading team. We also see her mother very badly wants Amy to make the cheerleading team, which will play a role later in the plot. Another stroke of witchery occurs during driving class when Cordelia, the other cheerleader who makes it in front of Amy, is struck with blindness. Buffy is now convinced Amy is a witch, with the help of Xander and Amy they prove she has actually cast a spell. They use very clique ingredients: the eye of a newt and the witches (Amy’s) hair. The next day at cheerleading tryouts Buffy is clearly the next target of the witches’ curse, as she launches a fellow cheerleader across the room - resulting in her losing her spot to Amy. But the curse is even worse, after confronting Professor Giles Buffy finds out that the spell has weakened her and she will die within hours. The two of them quickly move to confront Amy’s mother. But there is a twist which was again foreshadowed. This twist caught me most off guard though and I enjoyed it. This could have been picked up on when Amy comes home and tells her mother to do her homework. It turns out that the Witch is in Amy’s body only temporarily, she is actually Amy’s mother. She decided to use a ‘body switch’ spell in order to live vicariously through Amy. The Witch was a cheerleader in her youth, and wishes to be again. This addresses a fairly common issue with teens and their parents. Often parents and their kids likes and dislikes don’t perfectly align and although the parent wishes to see their kid do well, they should not get so involved, or literally force them to follow in their footsteps - Like Amy’s mother does. Buffy finally kills the witch by having one of her spells bounce back on herself.

Blog #10 Buffy Episode 2

This episode picked up where Episode 1 left off, as Buffy narrowly escapes from the coffin due to the help of a stranger (Angel). The Hellmouth is about to be opened by the vampires, allowing the 'underworld' a portal to the mortal world. Their lair was discovered to be underground after an abduction of one of Buffy's friends; Jesse. Buffy ventures into the town mausoleum to find the Lair, where she meets the stranger again, who introduces himself to her as ’Angel’. Although it is unclear who he is or what his role will be, with a name like Angel I predict that he will be Buffy’s ’guardian angel’ throughout the show. We are also introduced to another character named Cordelia. She is the staple 'popular girl' in highschool - self absorbed, and obsessed by boys, expensive things, and the fact that she is the queen bee. I believe that she will be the source of many of the regular high-school teen issues that will arise throughout the Seasons. Another reference to typical highschool life I enjoyed was when Buffy was on her way to protect the club - The Bronze - from an attack by the vampires, freeing their master. Before Buffy can leave her house, her mom promptly grounds her for skipping classes at school. Buffy tries to explain that she must go out or it will be the end of the world. Her mom then talks to her like she would any regular teenager - saying that it always feels like the end of the world as a teen when you can’t ‘go out’. But the viewer obviously knows that it could be the end of the world if Buffy does not stop the vampires from raising their master from their lair. These are the kind of double metaphors hidden throughout Buffy the Vampire Slayer that add both comic relief and allow its viewers to relate.

High School Is Hell Response

After finishing reading the article “High School is Hell” I was enlightened to a deeper level of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. After watching the first episode I had the impression that it was a TV series geared towards teenage girls and high school drama The article brought to light several different, more complex underlying themes that are embedded in every episode. These ‘hidden metaphors’, I believe will make the show much more interesting for me to watch - because it requires more thinking and analyzing of the plots within the episodes.
One particular large underlying metaphor that I particularly liked was the dual use of “High School is Hell” as a metaphor. It is certainly true that at some point in everybody’s high school career it can feel like hell. We certainly all must face our demons throughout high school. Buffy provides viewers with a relatable character to the target audience - teenagers - that they can look up to. Even though she certainly faces terrible situations throughout her high school career, which certainly seem insurmountable, she manages to ‘face her demons’ both literally and metaphorically. Saving her high school life, as well as usually her literal life.
When watching further episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I will try to observe these double metaphors hidden throughout the episodes. I am interested to see the literal monsters they use as metaphors for the ‘monsters’ we face in our high school careers. I am especially interested to find the situations where the metaphors are “…more real than the reality.” (Tracy Little, P.6) as is explained in the article. Overall, this article provided me with insight that is going to allow me to really enjoy the episodes and respect them beyond a shallow TV drama.

Blog #6 Buffy Episode 1

For my personal choice blog, I decided to watch Buffy the Vampire because it was the only television show I recognized. I figured it must have been popular at one time for a reason. In episode one, Buffy is going through the common scenario of being the new student at a school. Like any normal teenager, Buffy is nervous about meeting new people and making new friends and simply ‘fitting in’. Upon arriving to the school she has a talk with the principle, in which she reveals the reason for her change of schools - she burnt down the gym in the last one. When the principle asks why she would do that, she makes a slip of the tongue saying “vampi- Espestos”. Oddly the principle buys this lie and allows Buffy to enroll in the school. This Is where the reader gets the sense that Buffy is more than just an average teenage girl trying to fit in. She has a dark secret, obviously doing with vampires. Buffy further proves that she is not a normal teen when she accidentally drops her steak, which is picked up by a boy named Xander. The mystery about Buffy is further increased when her history teacher, Mr. Giles, hints at her knowledge of being a ‘Slayer’ - which Mr. Giles later explains means that her destiny is to destroy all vampires and fight the forces of hell. She doesn’t want to accept the status of slayer, because as is hinted before, it was the reason she was expelled out of her old school. Buffy is in a classic superhero scenario, torn between living a normal life and being a hero and fulfilling her destiny. It will be interesting to see which side of this debate she chooses. I believe she will choose to fulfill her destiny and protect innocent people. This is because of the strong morals she presented throughout the episode to everyone she met.

Blog #4 Jaynestown

I decided to watch the next episode in sequence so I watched Jaynestown. I noticed again in this episode the strong emphasis on personal relationships between the characters. I expected the characters to act more mature in a more advanced civilization. Though on some worlds, despite their advanced technology their cultures seemed fairly primitive. Most worlds are very similar to old western towns, without adequate law enforcement that were sometimes corrupt. The bars in the Episode highly remembered old-style taverns.
In Jaynestown Jayne pulls a heroic deed by trying to free all of the mudders. And although this backfires to a decent extent, the mudders still regard him as a hero; so much so that a mudder boy jumps in front of a bullet meant for Jayne, killing the young mudder boy. This casues Jayne to be ridden with guilt, just like Batman is for his inability to protect everyone in the city, and taking each life as his fault.
The  statu]e for Jayne, that she didn’t particularly feel she deserved, reminded me of a theme in the movie The Dark Night. The themes in both films showed that to be a true hero, that your people, or city really need. Sometimes you can’t receive all the glory for your heroics - because that is still the best thing for your people. In The Dark Night, Batman had to portray himself as the bad guy, because his city needed a villain, and he was the best villain they could have.

Firefly: Our Mrs. Reynolds

In this episode, Our Mrs. Reynolds, the first thing I noticed was the amount of gender discrimination. Throughout the beginning of the episode multiple women were given gender stereotypes. Especially the antagonist in the episode, Mrs. Reynolds. She used this gender discrimination in order to take advantage of the crew of the ship in several scenarios. Often she used her sexual appeal to get them to lower their guard, and then she would attack them. Disproving the stereotypes she put off, and was given. The episode started off in what appeared to be the old south west, where the village’s custom to the space crew they had joined in the bonding of customs where the plot of the episode orginates and the captin has a miscumunication with the villagers and their customs. (classic Pocahontas scenario) The village princess obviously assumes the two are wed and aboards his ship waiting to carry her bridal duties.
Another theme I found interesting was the focus on relationships throughout the episode. I would expect a civilization much more advanced in the future would have different norms and customs that would be considered more civilized. This has been the trend in the past, and I would expect it to be the trend in the future, Though perhaps the reason for their lack of sophistication is their lifestyle as essentially rebels. I am curious to see further into the episodes if characters from more sophisticated areas act how I would expect a advanced civilization too. Though I may start from the beginning in order to better understand the storyline.