I saw it. I didn’t want to. I tried for so long to stop myself from looking at the reason it’s never going to happen. Ever.
I looked at it for hours, the black and white contrasting the small alien-like being. I hated it, hated myself for hating it, hated you. Undeveloped and still it has changed the world. My world. Your world. Her world.
You got what you wanted. I am not the pregnant and barefoot in the kitchen type. You knew that. It scared you, scared I would abandon you like everyone else.
You think you’ve changed, that your safe now, that nothing can go wrong because you have the ultimate love. I think you have a lot of growing up to do and only three months to do it. Good Luck. Don’t fuck it up. It’s not a test this time.
I was sitting up at about 3am last night, the night before the big ’sleep in’, the night before the first time I would be able to feel what its like to wake up without the loud-the-world-is-ending-death-sound ringing and disturbing my dreams of super stardom in Asia…and I couldn’t fall asleep.
I thought back to my childhood and I realized that I had not progressed in the slightest. I am still the little girl standing at the top of the staircase to hear the adults laugh and drink too much. I am still the one who goes down to the kitchen five times to get a glass of water. I am definitely still the one that is scared to miss one moment that I should have been involved in. I am absolutely the girl who still can’t say no.
I will now, of course, blame my shortcomings on my parents. Thanks guys. Can you still blame mom and dad at 26? -another proof that I will never grow up.
Note: My parents got me involved in everything- I was in drama club, swimming, dance class, karate, soccer, choir….you name it, I was in it….and hated every moment…but that is the pact that lovers make in the heat of the moment, and the one my parents made four times- to raise ungrateful, dramatic, horrible little beasts.
Despite all this, I feel totally left out and cannot say no to people in fear that I will be leaving them out and missing out on some wonderful, exciting,crazy adventure. Anyone that knows me will testify to my neurotic behavior. I have even agreed to do things I know nothing about and know I would have to work five times as hard to complete. Par example: I agreed..or rather…volunteered to translate my former company’s directional plan into french…by the end of the day…I had not taken French since grade eleven in high school. I was totally fucked. Thank you Internet.
More recently, I agreed to DJ a big event and I’m totally not a DJ. I have a radio show with a friend of mine. HUUUGE difference. Now we’re being marketed as an image and we have to deliver-AND PEOPLE WILL SEE US! AHHHHHH! Radio is much more kind. Now I know you’re thinking “it can’t be that hard”…and that’s what I’ve told myself as well, but I still want to shit my pants.
There are other things too-but let’s not take off all my clothes so all of my crazy shows…just trust me…I say “I’ll do it!” to everything…the crazy part is…I do most of it and it turns out pretty good. Right now though…Saturday’s big event may see me crash Maybe you’ll be there to see me fall!
This inherent need to be a part of everything has lately found my skin stretched so thin that everything bruises and things that would usually bounce, make me bleed.
This morning the clock flashed 10am and I smiled, rolled over and stayed in bed for another hour.
So thank you morning, for letting me sleep through the cold walk into your darkness and miss out on your sunrise. I wonder what happened.
A trip to the grocery store or local market has changed dramatically over the last 25 years. With commercials in abundance about the “fresh” image that each respective grocery store tries to market, we think we are making the right choices. What is happening right now with our food is not something most people think about. Sure, when things happen like the Lysteria outbreak in Canada, people listen. They become scared and cautious, but normally average people trust that what they buy will not kill them and why should they think otherwise?
While the privileged and conscientious live their organic lifestyles, the everyday Joe and Jane will be a thing of the past. Millions of regular, every day people will die and soon.
It’s a business plan disguised as a government initiative to protect us. The brainchild of the World Trade Organization, it is clearly not about what is good for us, but about what can make more money. Changes that are parented by the World Health Organization and FDA of the Codex Alimentarius will be solidified on December 31st of 2009 in the United States.
Canada and other countries will not be far behind. It is becoming a not so choice-oriented suggestion. The WTO accepted the codex standards when it was formed in 1994 as a standard by which disputes over food are resolved. It’s simple, if the country is codex compliant, they win disputes, which means one thing: Every country in the world is racing to become codex compliant
We are being bullied by the corporation; by big medical, pharmaceutical, and agricultural to “fit in” and it’s working.
It’s not just a conspiracy; the WHO, the WTO and the FDA are, and without intention of dramatics, committing “Nutricide” for the sake of business. Different theories have stated that is may be some sort of population control plan, but that’s debatable and without concrete evidence. It does however; make you think about the possible alternative motives behind actions like this. I am not a conspiracy theorist, though it is always important to consider all points of view. As Oscar Wilde once said, “ The truth is rarely pure, and never simple.”
We are all aware of the dangers of processed foods and genetically modified meats and vegetables, but it’s been a circumstance until now, where we could trust that we were getting the nutrients we needed from unprocessed, vitamin and mineral-rich foods.
It’s the elephant in the room that no one is talking about. Maybe because right now, we are blind to its consequences: Codex Alimentarius is taking away our right to choose nutritional health with freedom.
Take this for example: nutrients under codex are not only limited, but DOES NOT actually include several essential nutrients that we need to live a healthy life as humans, It DOES include Fluoride which has been proven in recent studies to contain no real benefit for people. It DOES however make people complacent. Years ago, prisons used to manage inmates by giving them higher doses of fluoride in their water and food because it made them less aggressive and easier to control. Interesting fact, maybe not something to panic about and start making reference to Orwell’s world in 1984, but definitely something to think about.
Under common law anything not forbidden is permitted- codex alimentarius can be categorized as a Napoleonic code law, which means: anything not permitted is forbidden.
What seems strange is that if you go to the codex alimentarius commission’s website and look under the chemicals permitted in our foods, you will find extremely high levels of deadly chemicals that are ALLOWED…some even permitted in food labeled as “organic”. Scary.
Furthermore, in 2001, 176 countries including the United States and Canada got together and decided that there were 12 organic chemicals that should not be in our foods. These chemicals are called Pop’s –persistent organic pollutants. These 12 Pop’s were so horrible, that no one could argue that they should not be banned in foods worldwide.
Nine of these 12 chemicals are pesticides and Codex Alimentarius has brought back 7 of these 12 “deadly” Pop’s and made them available to be used in production of foods prepared and grown for human consumption.
What that means for us is that foods imported from other countries that have been processed and grown with these Pop’s cannot be stopped from being imported because it would now, because of Codex, be a trade violation.
I’m sure you can see the problem with this without me pointing out the glaring repercussions…but just in case, I’ll say it again. A lot of people will die.
And it won’t be those responsible for this implementation, because of course, they are prepared and they can afford it.
It’s the students on a budget, the young families trying to make ends meet, the average person who trusts those in power to do what is in our best interest, those will be the ones to go first. The rest may or may not follow. It can only be estimated.
Of course I will advise you not to take my word on this, read it for your damn self. Do some searching. The only way that things like this are allowed to happen is because people like us don’t care enough to know. Educate yourself.
We are all aware of the power of the Internet and the information that is available at the click of a button, but I’m not sure people actually realize the INFLUENCE that the Internet has on our media.
For those unfamiliar with the “Rathergate” scandal, here’s the unofficial recap-Dan Rather used documents that were later found to be unauthentic in “proving” our dear old Mr. Bush did something illegal to get out of being drafted in the military… there was actually no real proof-and the authenticity was proven to be false by…you guessed it….Bloggers.
The producer who aired the report on CBS was promptly fired and Dan Rather resigned within a few months of the incident.
I’m sure Mr. Bush has done many illegal things in his lifetime…but that’s editorial (delete that) and yet to be proven. Innocent until proven guilty, right?
Even a distinguished journalist that has been in the profession for several years can be fooled, this is a cautionary tale for us fresh out of J-school.
It is so important as Journalists that we always examine the facts and make sure that the information we are using is exact and authentic. Things like this don’t just happen, they happen when we let them.
Another example of the blogging world interfering in a negative way albeit funny to some….bad humor to others….The infamous….”ANON” (see video)
If you would like to learn more about what went down with the “Rathergate” scandal :
I have every reason to be very happy but I can’t help but regret something large. Something that could have changed my life completely.
There really is no rewind button.
I would never write and ending like this for anyone. I am a firm believer that love is a teminal disease and once diagnosed, there’s no treatment, no cure, no light at the end of the tunnel, no silver lining. You wake up in the morning, breathe air, see light, but it’s all just smoke and mirrors. You’re dead.
I wish I had 50% less insight, 30% less brains and 100% less heart. I think life would be a hell of a lot easier.
I turned 26 in April and took sexy pictures of myself and posted them on facebook(my sister quickly slapped me back into reality when she commented on one in particular where it looked as though i was topless. She simply said “I don’t get this one….” I replied, “I don’t either” and took the picture down. It was a crisis, forgive me world.
Everyone I know is getting married, having babies, buying houses and starting real careers…and here I am… kind of panicking because I can’t even decide what I want for dinner, I drink expired milk sometimes by accident and I wear bathing suit bottoms to avoid doing laundry for one more day. Gross, I know, but i’m not looking for a date.
But…It’s not like I don’t plan on growing up, I’m always making plans. For example, I am always looking for a house to buy on mls, i’ve even gone to open houses (not that I could buy one, I just feel like it’s an adult thing to do, followed with expensive coffee with people I can’t stand and fake laughter) and next year I will only wear “grown up clothes” to remedy the issue of being mistaken for a teenager, and last but not least, I’ve tried on wedding dresses (they looked stupid, but I felt like an actress– “oh my, my mother would love this one.” “I don’t know, this one is a bit long, the last thing I want to do is fall while walking down the isle” (fake laugh)
–So obviously I’m trying to death to catch up to my peers, it’s just not meant to be. To be honest, I’m kinda happy with my one bedroom apartment, my weekend boyfriend (whom is awesome, don’t get me wrong), writing books that will never be published and spending hours of my life watching bad horror movies.
For those people worried that they aren’t where they are “supposed” to be in life I ask, Who’s life are you living? Your own ? Yes? Then you’re right where you need to be.
The future of anything is uncertain, clouded with different choices, paths and hard decisions. Anything, even if just one change in direction, can perpetuate the change of many others. I think this is relevant when speaking of the future of journalism because it really is all up to us. By us, I do not mean journalists; but people. It’s all about what we want to know and how we want to find out.
As time passes and new technologies develop, even the Internet, the leading news source for people in our demographic, may find itself in the past.
Throughout the past year of my education in journalism, many experts and industry professionals have commented on the ways that how we report and how people consume the news is changing.I have a serious suspicion that it has always been changing and I’m unsure why, with knowledge of the past, people are so up in arms about it. It’s really not rocket science. Thankfully, things change.
As far as the fear that citizen journalism will become more widely accepted as real news, well, I’d have to argue that it might just be the purest and truest when it comes from people with no agenda. I have no problem with the ability to report more compellingly and possibly with more ‘pieces of the puzzle’ with the help from the people that were
There is so much information put out into the world, so much to process and understand that sometimes it’s overwhelming. It’s not only hard to retain information, it’s also a task to go through the information and find out what is really true and meaningful. In the process, I think a lot of reality and fact gets lost.
It has been said that we live in a world of “info-snackers”, people that take bits and pieces of information and skim articles to learn about what’s going on in the world. I think it’s deplorable that we have now created a word to make it okay for laziness to exist and flourish. Read a damn book.
“We know there is a vast morass of information out there that our audiences want us to try to make sense of. The danger consists in trying to leap above it, not by getting more dramatic or salient or verifiable facts, but by analyzing, speculating, predicting, interpreting – by drawing definitive conclusions while the bodies are still warm.”
-Paul Knox, The Globe and Mail
As journalism students, people with forced exposure to and curious investigation of the truth, I think we are the most in danger of forming un-wavering opinions. It is therefore a hard task to remain completely unbiased in our reporting. It’s kind of a hard place to be, but it is how it is and will remain. I guess it’s just a consequence for a journalist on a personal level, but one well worth it for the successful result of the best truths that we can find.
There is always gray. That’s life. Details left uncovered and angles untold are a prevalent problem in a lot of stories that journalist try to tell. I think this is where it gets hard. Where facts are not present, but implied; and can become confused. I believe that this is where a good journalist stands apart from a great one. A great journalist, when all sources are exhausted, can tell a story and make it compelling, interesting and truthful, without letting a reader, listener, or viewer know how they feel about the subject.
It’s easy to tell someone how you feel about something, but really, who the hell cares what I think. With exception of this blog, telling the world my interpretation of events, ideas or people, really doesn’t mean a damn thing, and I don’t mind at all. I just want to be a part of the truth and contribute a small part to the day that will never come: The day that people realize what (good) journalists try to achieve.
As a journalism student, we need to know how to use tools to find out the information that we need, and as we all know, the Internet is probably the most unreliable when it comes to credibility. It is so important to critically examine each site before using it as a source…but…many people (myself included) are guilty of using the Internet irresponsibly (the night before the big paper is due…) and not checking out other possible places that important information can be found.
Our college librarian, Peggy French came to speak with us about the other resources that can be accessed from online (…even the night before the big paper is due…) and how to properly search for topics, use key words and use different library sciences codes in search engines (Kitten$/Kitten*) to make our search results more relevant.
Peggy also gave us some tips that can be used by everyone! For example…
DID you KNOW? That you can search articles by title in google by simply typing allintitle: before your search words? I didn’t… as well, if you type in your key words followed by (gov.on.ca),you will get a listing of only government sites…maybe I’m behind the times in google-speak. I think a LOT of people are.
I think knowing WHERE to look is one of the key concepts to learn in journalism. You can have all of the right words in the right place, your writing can be magnificent, your presentation, outstanding; but if the information is incorrect or incomplete because you didn’t look in the right places, well then, you are not doing your job.
Maybe you’ll be there to see me fall!
