American Flaws

I just read a journal posted on deviantart by a member called Humon. She's been posting cute and silly little comics mostly about Scandinavian countries, but also other countries around the world. She's getting flack from people who don't like how she's portraying their own countries and consider her to be racist. She kind of just wants people to let the jokes and silliness stand, but also to not take things so personally. It's based on stereotypes, which in a way are based in truth of how other people perceive something to be. I perceive people who wear all black and dye their hair black and one other stupid color to be emo, that's not always the case, but it's a stereotype. Just like how back in the early 20th century women were considered to unstable to be able to vote o do a man's job. Blacks were considered to be too ignorant to to do anything other than menial labor, ever.

This all come back to an ignorant comment written by someone who was bore in 1993. that's... 16 years old. Someone else posted the valid point that they're some America and laugh at how America is depicted. That's fine, the issue I took was from the 16 year old who said 'Why not laugh at America, there are SO many flaws.'

It's that type of thinking that starts hate to begin with. No country is perfect, if that were the case people would be flocking there because the land would be made out f rainbows and sunshine. Puppies would be given away free on every street corner, there'd be no need for most of our laws because those issues would be nonexistent. People would be hired solely on their ability, skin color would play no part, so in theory there would be an even mixture of every skin-tone.

That is not the case. Yes, I agree that America has flaws, I see them pretty much every day, but I don't think the answer is leaving this country. In looking at British tabloid-news and the flack that's been falling there about Jan Moir's insensitive article and Nick Griffin now being lambasted in the public for being a Nazi, let's say sympathizer, those are issues in Britain. In talking in my not-really American Literature course we spoke about how few rights there are for women in other countries. All that are flaws. But if America is so fucked up, why are people flocking to come here. Some legally, some not, but in some instances all people want is to move to America. Some Americans want nothing more than to move out. Yes, this country has it's flaws, but in today's era of time they're not that bad, sometimes. In the past 100 years we have learned what to do and what not to do and things have changed. There are voting rights across the nation, people can't be barred from the polls. There are equal opportunity rights for rental, purchase, hiring et cetera in this nations. Laws are being passed every year to protect more people who in the past have gotten the short end of the stick. Not every country can talk about working towards that sort of acceptance for so many countries.

I'm not saying America is perfect, and I'm not saying it's a hellhole. It's another country, like so many other First World Countries where our issues are bourgeois such as 'oh no! there's a scratch in my car' or 'oh no! the screen on my 80 bajillion dollar electronic is cracked' and not something like 'oh shit! My neighboring country is invading and killing all my villagers' or 'oh shit-fuck! That factory up river is dumping billions of gallons of chemical waste into the river where my cooking water comes from' or 'oh shit! I now have HIV, am passing it onto my kid, an am dying of malaria.' I'm not trying to trivialize every issues that Americans may have, but when they're compared to the lives of people who don't have what we have, safety regulations for pretty much everything. People are trying which counts for more that people want to think.

Yes, America has it's flaws an I see them much more glaringly so than other countries because I haven't bee to other countries. Every country has different flaws for where they are in having money so they can work to bettering things for their country. America has made it so far and in the youngest major power in the world. That counts for something, but with such rapid progress and change, some corners were cut and events that happened hundreds of years ago are now happening in America.

I don't think I properly addressed what I wanted to say, but it kind of ties into my journal from a few weeks ago about people complaining about attending college at ODU, or complaining about America while still living here. I'll end this with one of my mother's mottoes. ''It could be worse, so I can't complain.'

Jasmine P.

200-306 Movie List

It continues. Getting into the home stretch, actually. I will succeed for the year, maybe next year there will be a different challenge. Onto the lists:

200) Little Miss Sunshine w. writer & director comm: July 16

201) Thank You For Smoking: July 16

202) Thank You For Smoking w. director commentary: July 17

203) Thank You For Smoking w. dir and actor comm: July 17

204) Vulgar: July 17

Singing Till I'm Blue in the Face

This list started off with some songs that travel through music. Tunes carry the story.

205) Little Shop of Horrors (1987): July 19

206) Little Shop of Horrors (1987) w. commentary: July 19

207) The Singing Detective: July 19

208) What Dreams May Come: July 20

209) Finding Neverland: July 20

210) Soldier’s Girl: July 23

211) Soldier’s Girl w. commentry: July 24

212) The Red Violin: July 24

213) The Corpse Bride: July 24

214) Dog Day Afternoon: July 25

215) The Godfather: July 27

216) The Godfather part II: July 28

217) The Godfather part III: July 28

218) Food, inc.: July 29

219) Scarface: July 30

220) Scent of a Woman: July 30

221) Serpico: July 30

Righteous Praise to Pacino

This title is a wee bit late, but the sentiment is still the same. Pacino when he was younger, was fucking adorable, attractive and is still incredibly impressive as an actor.

Amendment: maybe I spoke a little soon. There’s a fair few Pacino flicks on this list. Not as many as the last, but there are some

222) …And Justice For All: Aug 1

223) …And Justice for All w. commentary: Aug 1

224) Wet Hot American Summer: Aug 2

225) Wet Hot American Summer with commentary: Aug 2

226) Donnie Brasco: Aug 3

227) A Righteous Kill: Aug 4

228) Blade Runner: Aug 4

229) Lords of Dogtown w. Z-Boys commentary: Aug 4

230) I’m Through with White Girls (The Inevitable Undoing of Jay Brooks):Aug 6

231) Lakeview Terrace: Aug 8

232) Kentucky Fried Movie: Aug 9

233) Kentucky Fried Movie w. Commentary: Aug 9

234) Live Free or Die Hard [pg-13]: Aug 10

235) Bonnie and Clyde: Aug 10

And this is Thrilla! Thrilla yeah

Whee!! Free movies, and apparently a thriller genre marathon. Haha, awesome.

236) Vantage Point: Aug 11

237) 88 Minutes: Aug 11

238) The Contract: Aug 12

239) Enemy of the State: Aug 12

240) Men in Black: Aug 13

241) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: Aug 13

242) Short Circuit: Aug 13

243) The Green Mile: Aug 14

245) Assault on Precinst 13 (1976): Aug 14

246) Armageddon: Aug 15

246) The Fifth Element: Aug 15

247) Crusing: Aug 16

248) Die Hard: Aug 17

24 Frames a second

I actually ventures forth for a movie in a theater. There will be more than one of those on this list before too long.

249) District 9: Aug 18

250) Plan 9 From Outer Space: Aug 19

251) M*A*S*H*: Aug 19

252) M*A*S*H* w. commentary: Aug 20

253) Glengarry Glen Ross: Aug 21

254) Glengarry Glen Ross w. commentary: Aug 21

255) Inglourious Basterds: Aug 21

256) Author! Author!: Aug 21

257) The Last Boy Scout: Aug 22

258) The Motorcycle Diaries: Aug 22

259) 1984 (1984): Aug 23

260) Dazed and Confused: Aug 25

261) Jaws: Aug 25

262) Death Proof: Aug 25

263) Ocean’s Eleven: Aug 29

264) Ocean’s Eleven w. actor comm: Aug 30

Fucked Up and some Soderbergh

265) Harold and Maude: Aug 31

266) Sex, Lies and Videotape: Sept 4

267) Insomnia: Sept 6

268) The Departed: Sept 6

269) Scarface (1932): Sept 10

270) Taxi Driver: Sept 13

271) Traffic: Sept 13

272) Traffic w. director & writer commentary: Sept 16

273) Groundhog Day: Sept 16

274) Minority Report: Sept 19

275) Hot Fuzz: Sept 19

276) Hot Fuzz w. Wright & Pegg commentary: Sept 20

277) Hot Fuzz with Wright & Tarantino commentary: Sept 20

278) Dead Right: Sept 20

279) Dead Right w. Wright commentary: Sept 20

280) Dead Right w. Frost and Pegg commentary: Sept 20

281) Adventureland: Sept 21

I have some fucking jaffa cakes in my pocket!!

282) Adventureland w/ commentary: Sept 24

283) Heat: Sept 25

284) Heat w. commentary: Sept 25

285) Hot Fuzz w. police character commentary: Sept 26

286) Hot Fuzz w. Sanford comm: Sept 26

287) Hot Fuzz w. ref. police commentary: Sept 26

288) Rounders: Sept 27

289) Rounders w. poker player commentary: Sept 27

290) Rounders w. comm: Oct 1

291) Blacula: Oct 2

292) Scream Blacula, Scream: Oct 3

293) Dog Day Afternoon w. commentary: Oct 3

294) Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace and Music: Documentary: Oct 4

Pre-production

Wow, my titles for these keep getting more and more stupid…but que sera… ~70 movies to go…Sweet.

295) Snatch: Oct 6

296) Snatch w. commentary/: Oct 6

297) Son of Rambow: Oct 7

298) Son of Rambow w. commentary: Oct 7

299) Things to do in Denver when you’re dead: Oct 8

300) Be Kind Rewind: Oct 10

301) In Bruges: Oct 10

302) Run Fat Boy Run: Oct 12

303) Chinatown: Oct 12

304) Lock, Stock and Two-Smoking Barrels: Oct 16

305) Sleepy Hollow: Oct 17

306) Sleepy Hollow w. commentary: Oct 18

Jasmine P.

Twitter

I spend a lot of time on Twitter, well TweetDeck specifically. It has ended up becoming my first source for news because I'm not really news mined enough to just go and check out Washington Post, or NY Times that often. I'll glance at CNN every now and again, Hufington Post when I decide I want to laugh at the right then hate the left for bieng just as bad as the right, and periodically I check out BBC for the fuck of it. I'll read interesting sounding news links, as bad as it is, I have sensationalist leanings toward my news, and every now and again the sensation is actually news and not just attention fodder, so it works out.

I have had varied conversations with people I don't know, people I don't know if I'll ever meet and those have been interesting. I'm am entirely intrigued by my followers. I consider myself to be a comic and art person, but I have a habit of talking about movies a lot. My followers astound me. I truly wonder how they find me. I know it's from the front page, or my '@' mentions to people, but still, I'm an 'Internet Nobody' and there are a few people I don't know IRL who take any time to read the stupid things I spout every day. I may post a movie quote, a song lyric, other quotes, or I end up just cursing the stupid things in life that happen. I promote my dA account periodically when I post stuff, but other than that my Twitter is just a place for me to yell into the void, just so what I have to say is heard by something and doesn't just echo off my skull.

But for me this relatively short and not super verbose journal is a wee bit of a shot out to some of the people I follow. On TweetDeck I have people broken down based on how/why I follow them, in some cases people who know each other if I have no other reason, and what they do. From Left to Right it's: All Friends, DA People, Thinkers, News, Webcomicers, Comics, Directors, Actors & Celebs, Critics and Reviews, Writers, Real Friends. My real friends are so far to the right because they as a collective don't say as much as the other groups, and they're always a pleasant surprise when I finally sit down and read my tweets. The groups have grown as the number of people I follow increases. It is currently at 152 accounts. It will grow. I break them down as such so going through all of them is less overwhelming. Some of the groups were one group until I realized I had too many in one group, Webcomics/Comics is one such, as are 'Directors-Writers' it's broken apart for my sanity.

But from all of my groups there are my gems. I'm taking a moment to highlight some of the accounts that I follow and a little bit about why.

@Joe_Hunter: Somebody I watched over on dA starting just this past January. It's been an amusing ride thus far. Conversations btween here and dA are an amusing combination of 'why the fuck do you have the Internet' and 'Hay! This movie owns!!1!' and 'Fuck I want to shoot my 13 year-old self in the face'. A person I gab with and horrify because it's all good and amusing.

@ThatKevinSmith I like the man's movies. They make me laugh and were a part of my shift in movie culture this year, it's been an avalanche ride since I finally sat down and rented Clerks back in February. His lve for his wife is easy to see, and the crudeness all in all I find amusing. I'm also a nosy frig, so taking a peek at someone else's life with as candid as he is in intriguing.

@mental_floss: Just about any sort of trivia can and will pop up here. I like trivia, I love the magazine and it's one of my favorite sites to check out when I'm killing time. It's also one of the accounts I retweet the most because their random trivia is always interesting to read, and I think some people need more random facts in their life.

@JonathanAmes: I was first introduced to his larger than life writing when I picked up 'The Alcoholic' out of the blue in my campus bookstore, and I do not regret that move. His writing is real life fantasy, some thing seem amazingly fantastic, but it's not shroud in magic, it's from his amusing way of looking at the world. His tweets are about his new TV show, and... not sure what else, I've only recently started following him on twitter.

@PauloCoelho: I loved The Alchemist when I was first assigned to read it back in 9th grade Pre-IB English I. I liked the adventure, I had a great introduction to his writing then. I didn't read another thing of his until I got to college and bought The Alchemist again, and some of his other books. His tweets are interesting, they kind of make me evaluate my life, my world and the people around me. Not so much in a negative fashion, but to get another look at things. He's very active with his posts, philosophical.

@EdgarWright and @JasonReitman I put these two together because it's their combined banter that makes me laugh. Edgar is doing a daily photoblog this year, so those are interesting to see. I like hearing about interaction between the directors as they're both editing films at the moment, or as they're taking them to different festivals.

@Slashfilm, @FirstShowing, @MovieGeeks a trifecta of movie reviewers and critics right there. I hear about a air number of movies from these accounts which is cool. Only downside to following them is it makes me really want to get to a movie festival some time, and also makes me annoyed that nothing interesting happens in Virginia, and if something does, it's far as fuck away from Hampton Roads.

@CameronStewart is the writer and artist for a Harvey Award Winning webcomic Sin Titulo. He has angry comments about Canada, nice comments about Canada and talks about drawing professional comics. He shares sketches periodically, and is pretty entertaining

@CalaveraKid another person makin' with the funny pages on and off the internet. His two comics are awesome to see when he has the chance to update, life and conventions happen often. Kukuburi is full of adventure, bright colors and a story that I can't wait to see how it continues. His other comic Butternut Squash is a slice of life comic that is fun to read. Fantastically silly happenings

@hawkster @ananathymous @aidosaur @konistehrad and @grohac all together inter-tweet and their collective conversations are entertaining. Hawkster draws Applegeeks, Ananthymous writes for both AG and Johnny*Wander which Aidosaur draws. The last two are friends of theirs, but between reading J*W and them on twitter their lives are highly amusing to read/see about. I've been reading AG for years and totally hopped over to J*W when Ananath started pimping it last fall.

@Serafinowicz I really only know him as 'Dwayne' from Spaced and the roommate from Shaun of the Dead, but he's been amusing to follow. He spends a bit of time every day tweeting short jokes which I know I've retweeted on more than one occasion.

@StehenFry He just is. I dunno really what to say, he's an English actor. Comedian, friend to Hugh Laurie who is a technophile and writes a blog where he periodically reviews new bits of technology that gets released. I enjoy following him. I dunno what else to say.

@Theory101* he is my best friend and a good third of things I quote are because I know he'll get a kick out of it. We frequent different universities and talk and quote the same shit all the time. He is The Ficus of awesome, he's a special frig, and that's how it should be. He's also the inspiration for Ficusxander the Great, yeah. Fuck yeah, best friends.

Well, for other people I follow and who happen to follow me, it's nothing against you for me not saying something, I just had more to say about these. This year I've been wrapped up in the romanticism of movies and film which may in part explain why I chose these accounts to begin with. I may do this again, go through the accounts I follow and comment on them. I'd work at not repeating accounts from this one, or I may go to some of those I copped out on and give better reasons for why I like following them. I mean, this is barely the tip of the following iceberg here. I think it's easy to see where I lost concentration when I typed this, but it's still something. I've been needing to just write for me for the past week, and here is it. I guess this one's for me, and for everyone I decided to pimp.

Jasmine P.

*note! he has a locked account as is, so no link will be provided...as if I don't openly tweet to him anyway, but no link nonetheless. Enjoy :)

Life- At A Glance

I dunno, kind of wanted to prove to myself that I can write without being irrational angry or irritated with something. I am saddened by the fact that I haven't 'reviewed' a movie in over a month. I've watched plenty, just not really reviewed them. I have some beginning in Word for 1932 Scarface, Heat, and Rounders, but seem to be nowhere near actually getting them done. I'm also fighting my desire to wrap up the year three months early. I might write it, but not post it because I like what I had, how it was planned out. This 'year in review' is very movie centric because all I did this friggin' year was watch movies, but I would have addressed it and how I feel it affected me.

But that is for another post.

This past week hasn't been as hellish as it might have been. A CS assignment was less annoying than I initially thought it would be because it didn't use the CS software. I had to look up how to do some things, but that's just because it's a different layout than Word 2003 is, and I just didn't know where some of the options were.

I had my stressful night when I thought Duke had died Wednesday morning, only to be sleeping. That would have been more sucky than it had been if not for Nick Frost replying to me on twitter. That made me morning. It was fucking auto-magically made better, so it's all good.

I got introduced to some new music on Friday, and will hopefully have my new CDs by the end of the week. One is a Swedish band called Movits! they're an odd jazz-rap combo, but I like it. I also finally shelled out the dough for the MASH soundtrack, then again, I really just want Suicide is Painless, but the entire soundtrack should be interesting to have. After watching the Woodstock Doc, I want more things by a band called Canned Heat from the 60s.

Jasmine P.