Hurricane Katrina=Life As We Knew It

Okay so I was on Hulu, procrastinating as usual, when a commercial, those little poops, came on. The commercial was seeking for help and donations to the people in Japan, who were very much affected by the natural disasters that occurred there recently. This made me think of the hurricane, hurricane Katrina, that happened in New Orleans in 2005. Well you know how people today say that  if our president then, George W. Bush, had sent more help to New Orleans, or if the city had warned people earlier about hurricane Katrina the affects wouldn't not have been that bad? Well I think Susan Pfeiffer took the story of hurricane Katrina and twisted, or made the story a little more intense to make the story of this fanTABuloUS book I just finished reading, Life As We Knew It

It's a little complicated to explain why I think this, but I'll try my best. In the beginning of the book, when the astroid first hits the moon moving it closer to Earth, shouldn't scientists have none about it? I mean they did know about it, but they didn't think it was going to be that big of deal. When something...so important in our atmosphere has the slightest chance of being harmed, you take it to heart. You do mega amounts of research, and if you are sure nothing will happen, you still have a back up plan just in case something does. The U.S.A did none of those things, and even worse after the asteroid hit the moon and the world was now ending, you heard nothing and saw nothing about the President going to cities who had been severely hit to help, and there was nothing about scientists making up a plan to help everyone. It seemed as though everyone was on there own now, just like the people in New Orleans during hurricane Katrina. Why does the government just ignore people in their time of need and when things like this happen? Is it just the easier way out? Are they just lazy? Well I'm sorry but that's just messed up and community cannot run like that.

I can't really predict anything about what happened to Miranda, and the rest of the world in this crisis, because I already finished the book and know what happens to them, but I do think that if Susan Pfeiffer had continued writing the book instead of ending it where she did, the people in small towns would slowly bring things back to normal on their own because the way the government was acting, no way anyone was getting help from them! I think this because...that's exactly what ended up happening. I might be wrong though, that's just what I have heard, and if I am right about Susan Pfeiffer basing Life As We Knew It off of hurricane Katrina,  that's what also happened.

P.S Miranda did become more grateful about everyday things, and I'm trying to too! (See last blog post)

Give Thanks

Okay, okay, you caught me, I'm reading Life As We Knew It by Susan Pfeffer, for the sixth time. It just never fails to bring out all different kinds of emotions in me. Some times, I even feel like I am Miranda Evans, the main character, and the moon really did get hit by an asteroid, so now it's much closer to Earth, and the world is ending. When good things happen to Miranda while she tries to fight for survival, I start smiling, and when an unlucky things occurs to her, I start tearing up. I guess it's because Miranda's life event  are written in a diary, so I feel closer to her, more connected, and have grown to love her, even though she can be an immature brat. Like one time, she said to her mom, that she was feeding her little brother, Jonny, because she loved him more. Really Miranda? You know that's not true, your just trying to be difficult. Anyways, after reading this book many times, I have come to one conclusion about the message of the book: always be thankful for what you have.

Now as a kid, I used to hate when my mom was "Nina, you should be thankful that your so lucky." in my head I would always want to scream MOM, STOP, I KNOW I'M LUCKY, AND I'M THANKFUL FOR IT SO WILL YOU PLEASE STOP SAYING THAT. But now I get it. I think Miranda does too by then end of Life As We Knew It. Before the moon got hit by an asteroid, and cause the end of the world, Miranda was complaining about the silliest things, such as, school was giving too much homework, or that her mom wouldn't let her start figure skating again, and even that there wasn't any chocolate in the house. Then the unthinkable happened, and she realized  those things weren't important anymore, now her complaints were about being bored, or wanting electricity, and being hungry.  Right now, if the internet crashed, electricity went out, and suddenly all the food in our fridge was gone, I think I would also stop worrying about small thing in life. But I don't think about these kinds of things because I don't notice them, how dependent of them I am, and lucky I am to have them! I can't imagine my life without them, and I think that goes for most teenagers. At least the ones I know. Just think about a teenager...that isn't texting in the street, playing video games, going on Facebook, eating a big bag of chips, using the light to do last minute homework, or listening to music. Does something drastic have to occur for people to be more thankful of things that they don't realize basically shape their everyday life? I hope not.

I think that's exactly why Susan Pfeffer wrote this book though. So we can learn the lesson to be thankful of everything around you, without anything drastic happening, like it did to Miranda. I mean I know Miranda in the end of Life As We Knew It knew not to complain about school giving too much work anymore, and just enjoy the little things in your life. In society these days, it takes way too long for the whole community to learn something. For example: Global Warming. We have none about this issue for quite some time now, and were still just now noticing that we need to step up our game and save our planet. Seriously? WAKE UP SOCIETY. If we don't start learning lessons, this lesson that Susan Pfeffer is trying to send out specifically, we are going to be in so much shock when something big finally does happen and everything we weren't is gone.  So guys, if your mother is like mine and says to you  "Be thankful for what you have,"  it might be annoying but still don't take it as much as a joke, because it might be gone from you in a second.

Blue and Yellow, Blue and Yellow, Blue and Yellow.

Do you want the honest to god, full truth? I did not like Baz Luhrmann's version of Romeo + Juliet. Now I expect you to keep that secret to yourself. The whole movie was modern, yet the language was old, so it made a too weird contrast for me. However, the two aspects that did pop was the acting, and the use of color in the film, especially the use of color. I say the use of color especially because they're a big part of the look of the film, and the look of the film, is the first thing I notice. It really expressed a lot of things, and explained a lot of things! Color was just in general a really important part of the the movie Romeo + Juliet by Boz Luhrmann.


When the Capulet family was being filmed, many cool colors were used, especially blue. Also, the Capulets also walked strictly, and their appearance was more dark.  Apparently, Luhrman wanted "The Capulets to become Hispanic, adorned with very Catholic cultural icons."

When the Montague family was being filmed, many warm colors were used, like yellow. They were more playful, and...immature. Boz Lurhmann, for the Montagues, wanted  "something far more Anglo then the Capulets: hence the 'GI Joe imagery' of the Hawaiin shirts".

Excuse me if I'm being captain obvious, but I think Boz Luhrmann use of bright and intense colors, for everything not just for determining the two families, were used too make the shakespeare language easier to understand. Whenever the colors got darker..I knew something bad would happen... and vise versa, and let me tell you...it worked! I understand the story of Romeo and Juliet...that much better. I definitely did not know colors could do that, however, now that I think about it, I could just see in black and white. You would never get to see the color of the most beautiful ocean in the world...or the color of the most beautiful flower. Maybe that's just me though. Does color impact your life as it does mine?

Wrong!

Okay, I admit...I was wrong about what I said in my blog post "I Can't Read Boys!", or at least I think so. Now, I think that it doesn't matter who the main character is, it matters who the author's audience was, and my fellow commenters made me realize that. One person said that they thought it depended on who the main character was, girls connecting more to girl books, and guys to guy books,  except in the book The Invention of Hugo Cabret, and another person said they also thought it wasn't about the main character but about who is the audience. All of these comments made me think really hard , and I finally reached a decision to see my reader's point of views and see if I agreed with them...so I continued reading Hugo Cabret, and finished easily! I even almost started crying when the book ended, that's how good it was. So, I'm going to seriously start being more opened minded about listening to other people's opinions, because they could even change your own!

Hugo Cabret is a young boy who is very good at working with his hands. His deceased father taught him that skill, and it helped him well later on because now Hugo Cabret is an orphan and spends his days using his hands to fix clocks in a train station, but he needs even more excitement then that , so he begins stealing form the toy booth in front of his "home" and building and re-building the toys, that's were his adventure begins.

In my opinion, this book attracted me more than Youth In Revolt or It's Kind of A Funny Story, because one, I love art, two it uses historical facts which really makes the book interesting and seem like a true story, and three, just like an intriguing story! It was so different, and I think that's why I loved it. In my opinion, the reason the author made it so different then form other books, is because he wanted to stand out from all the writers, teach us something, and create some art. Well, in my eyes, he succeeded at that, and created a master piece. Now this book is hitting my "Top 10 Best Books" list.

Master Posts

 I wanted to congratulate everyone cause everyone had great blog posts but the three people bellow, Audrey, Teddy and Anabel, are people who had really inspiring blog posts. They are  most definitely my "All Star Mentors" of the week.




Ms.Robbins

Audrey Bachman

Just Go With It

http://lostinreading.blogspot.com/2011/01/just-go-with-it.html

Audrey seems like someone who is really creative. At least her blog post is. She didn't just do a typical three paragraph blog post, she really used good writing craft and wrote her post in a purposeful, creative way. She wrote a blog post in response to a poem, and made good observations, good inferences and good conclusions about the poem, and they were all paragraphs that were...extravagant... and made you go through a little thinking adventure in your head. She wrote like a little memoir before analyzing the poem and it was just so powerful, I never stopped reading I promise. Even though this kind of blog post is so original and different, it's one of the most amazing one's I have read yet, and it might be risky for me to do this because I'm not as creative as Audrey, but one day when I feel like changing the mood a little in my blog, I will most definitely turn to Audrey's writing for ideas.

Ms.Rear

Teddy Ostrow

Bye Bye Dad

http://ienjoybabythrowup.blogspot.com/2011/02/bye-bye-dad.html 

I'm not a big Harry Potter nut, I mean I love watching the movies, but that's about as much I'm dedicated to the series, however, Teddy's blog post on the books really got to me and made me think a lot about Harry Potter. He basically took his feelings about his dad leaving to go take care of his grandma in Connecticut, and made a connection to a detail in the book. I'm guessing that when he read about how Harry Potter's parents are dead, it brought out feelings about himself not seeing his dad for a while. He  put those feelings on his blog, and in this way made his posts deeper, and really showed us what Teddy was thinking. After he made the connection to his book, he wrote another great paragraph on his thoughts on orphans, and what he thinks they go through, which gave his audience a different perspective and the ability to think about a topic they probably don't think about everyday. Then, he wrote a paragraph, on memories he would keep of him and his dad, which was just plain old sweet, and made me appreciate sitting down at the dinner table with my whole family. I really enjoyed just the whole post in general because it was different then what I am used too. It wasn't the typical blog post, in this one...I really got to the writers head. On top of this all, it was great format, good paragraphs and good editing. I can proudly say I was on Teddy Ostrow's blog and read a piece of his writing.

Ms.Rear

Anabel Polin

A Fraction of the Whole…Still

http://youcalledishmeal.blogspot.com/2011/02/fraction-of-whole-still.html 

First things first, man did Anabel go above the meeting standards blog post. She wrote five real solid paragraphs, and I never got bored from reading her post. I think Anabel's post on her book A Fraction of the Whole is a really good example of a star mentor blog post.  She has great capitalization, spelling, purposeful paragraphs, and good format to use. She first tells you what the book is, gives you context, and then gives you her theory, everything my E.L.A teacher, Ms. Robbins taught us to do. When she wrote the context of the book, she wrote it in a quick brief way, which is something I really need to learn to do. In her theory, I thought it was really cool that she didn't just focus on the theme of the whole book, but she tried to unpack a character in the book with small details she noticed about them. She didn't even unpack the main character, she unpacked a character on the side, which is something I really want to try. Also, as I was reading, I really felt like she was talking to me because she had so much personality put into it, which made her writing more interesting, and her thoughts seem more realistic. It's just definitely a blog post everyone can learn from. 

i like poopy
lots of it
BIG
BLOBS
OF
POOOPPYYYY
yummy   ;]


lawlzies im so funny.


love Sabrina Quintanilla. Nina is officially hacked.

OCD!

This week for E.L.A (English Language Arts), we had to write a poem in response to a painting. So, I remembered recently, when I went to the museum, Mass MoCA, I saw this artist Sol Lewitt who drew millions of straight lines on giant walls, and I really engoyed it. Later, when I tried writing this poem, I realized it was because I could relate to this artist. Through his art, Sol Lewitt tried to express his OCD, and it reminded me how OCD I can be sometimes, so I wrote my poem about how I feel about this "disorder" I have and how others react to me having it. I also know that many people have OCD with something, maybe not like me, where everything has to be neat or I freak out and have a mental break down, but on something else, like if laces are ot tied, so maybe you can relate to this poem, and artist too.

Sol Lewitt

                                                                  

 Stop!                                Stop!                                                                                                                  

They Holler                     I Holler         

OCD                              OCD

They Scream                   I scream

Freak!                             Freak!

They Whisper                 I Whisper

Quit it!                            Quit it!

They Shout                     I Shout

Crazy!                            Crazy!

They Mutter                    I Mutter

I'm sorry                         He's sorry

I cry                                He cries

                    I guess

          Were Just the Same