Finally just about done

I am getting ready to turn in my last assignment for my English 100 class and with that I will mark the end of that class. I will then only have one class left after I turn in the assignment. I already feel a little less stressed and more relaxed. I already have big plans this weekend to just chill and relax before I do my final for my Native American History class on Tuesday. My final for that class is split in two parts. The first part is a three page paper on the meaning of "the Indian problem" and how that meaning has changed over time. It is probably going to be boring because for some reason he wants you to take one word or maybe even a sentence and write a three page paper on it. I would not be to difficult normally but he wants to take that one word or sentence and find exactly what he is looking for. For example on the last one word topic essay he deducted some points because it wasn't right. I don't really like him so I didn't want to bother arguing about it, but I should have because you don't make an assignment that is essentially your interpretation and then say it is wrong. Perhaps if he gave more detail on what exactly he was looking for then it would make it a little bit easier. Also because of this craziness I don't really care what I write and don't put to much effort into. It is because I don't want to waste my time and effort to write a three page paper on a one word topic and have it end up being wrong. For the second part of the final he essentially just said don't worry about it. Why would you tell people not to worry at all? Why not just not say anything and make it a surprise? That's basically what it is. I just can't wait to get that one last day over with. This class is so annoying and his lack of information gets on my nerves. That's enough about that class though. I can already feel that I am getting tense just writing about it. Now back to the more calm topics. I am feeling better now that my research paper final is done for my English 100 class. I cannot wait for some to come. It cannot get here fast enough. I am glad I decided not to take summer school. I don't think I could have handled it especially since this semester was so difficult for me. I really need these few summer months to recharge my batteries and get ready for next semester. I know i have said that same thing in previous post but that is how much I need it. I need it so much I have to keep repeating it because it can't get here fast enough. Now off to bed to get some sleep finally.

The X-Files

The X-Files is one of my favorite shows of all time. It is pretty much the combination of just about everything I love. It combines monsters, paranormal, and extraterrestial things all rolled up into one big ball. Also there is a great partner/odd couple thing going on. The two main characters are Agent Mulder and Agent Scully. There are just about the complete opposite of each other. The first and most obvious thing would be that Agent Mulder is a man and Agent Scully is a woman. Also Agent Mulder is significantly taller then Agent Scully. Agent Mulder believes in every unexplainable phenomenon without really questioning it. While Agent Scully is a scientist and doctor so her first instinct is to find an explanation for what ever happened because there is always a logical explanation. The two were made partners for the precise purpose of Agent Scully investigating and determining a reasonable scientific explanation for each X-file that Agent Mulder investigates. This was very prominent in the first few seasons because they were new partners and just getting to know each other. As the seasons went on this became less of a factor of the show. The show then became more of a partner mystery type of show. The other thing I like about the show the way the seasons were structured. The episodes were very new watcher friendly. Each season was about twenty four episodes long. The first couple of episodes and the last couple of episodes were the episodes the strung together the overall mythology of the show. The around twenty episodes in the middle of the season were usually all stand alone episodes. This means that they two would be assigned a case. They would take the case and spend the episode trying to solve it. Usually by the end of the episode they would have some sort of conclusion. The most common type of ending would be one were it is possible that the phenomenon they are investigating was caused by explainable actions but it would leave it open ended enough were it is equally possible that the phenomenon was natural or unnatural. This is one big part that I enjoy. I am the type of person who pretty much believes in anything because unless it is 100% scientifically proved to not exist there is the possibility that it is real. That's why I like the show because they have no problem saying that the unimaginable might be the cause of unexplainable phenomenon. Another thing that the show has going for it is that it has very good humor between Agent Mulder and Agent Scully. While it can be serious they find ways to realistically add humor to the situation that the agents are in. I still have not finished watching the entire series but I have watched most of it, around seven out of nine seasons. I hope to finish off the show this summer so then I can truly say I love the show and how amazing the show is because I would have seen all the episodes of the show. Well that is pretty much all I have to say about the show. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys the unexplainable mystery type of thing. That is it for this blog. I don't really have mush else to say about the show besides how much I like it.

What Happened to the Maya?

This is an essay I had to do for my Native American History class. I thought it was pretty interesting and thought this would be a good place to show it.

The Maya are probably the most well known native people of the Americas. It is most likely because of the many advancements that the Mayan people made centuries ago when they were the top power of the region. The other major thing that is a major factor in popularity of the Maya is their fall as a civilization. It has stumped a lot of people as to the cause of their decline. The difference between the Maya and some other native people of the Americas is how big and powerful the Mayan civilization was. This is what baffles a lot of people. How can a civilization as big, powerful, and sophisticated as the Mayan go into a great decline and loss all of its previous dominance? There have been many opinions as to the cause of the decline of the Mayan civilization. Some of the common explanations are disease, overpopulation, or self-destruction.
Disease is possibly one of the many factors involved in the decline of the great Mayan civilization. While it is a factor it is a smaller one. There was disease that affected the civilization but not to the degree where it would wipe out the entire civilization. Diseases were common of the time but because of such the massive size of the civilization it would take a major disease to wipe the whole civilization out. So while it was a small factor it was not the only cause of the decline of the civilization.
Overpopulation was another factor in the decline of the great Mayan civilization, but just like diseases it was not the main cause. It was an important factor in the decline though. Because of overpopulation a bigger food source was needed in order to support the many people of the civilization. Unfortunately the area they were located in was incapable of providing the amount of food that was needed for the massive civilization. Also because of the amount of food that was needed forests were burnt down to make more room for crops, but because of the natural cycle of extreme rainfall and extreme drought that the area had it made it difficult to maintain the crops needed and therefore unable to feed the huge population.
Self-destruction I would say is the main cause of the decline of the great Mayan civilization. The self-destruction was caused by the culmination of the many factors that lead to the decline of the Mayan civilization. Because the Mayan was doing something not done before in the area, having cities and large populations, all the problems they faced were the first time they were ever faced. Because of this they had to figure out everything themselves through trial and error. This then lead to possibly more errors then successes and because of that put the civilization into a decline.
Like they say every great civilization has their fall. The Mayan civilization is just another example of this. Because of the many new challenges that the civilization had to face, which they never faced before, they could not keep their great civilization together. Because of their and other great civilizations fall we better know now how to keep of society together because they did the trial and error for us, just like we are doing it for future civilizations.

Summer Plans

This summer I have a good amount of plans. Though I do have a lot less plans then I have had in previous years. Most of my plans for this summer involve recharging my batteries for next semester. This semester just burnt me out. Hopefully I will be ready for next semester and hopefully next semester won't be as difficult for me as last semester was. As of right now I know that I am going to have a lot of movie watching time and reading time. I have a huge backlog of dvd's I need to watch and books I need to read. So for about the first week I will just chill and pretty much do nothing besides reading and watching movies. Hopefully that week will accomplish two things. First hep me relax and recharge my batteries and second hopefully it helps me get my backlog of dvd's and books smaller. After that week of rest I have a few places I am going. First on May twenty seventh I will be attending an advance screening of Toy Story 3 at Pixar studios. I will be going with my aunt and we are going to make in into four day vacation. The Pixar studios are located in Emeryville in northern California near San Fransisco. We are going to leave on the twenty sixth in the morning. Originally we were going to leave Tuesday the twenty fifth in the morning but for some stupid reason my Native American History teacher wants to give us our final on that day and of course my class is at night for 7:00 pm to 9:50pm so we were forced to leave the next morning. It is really annoying because by the end of this week I will be done with all of my classes except that one. Also we could have easily taken our final this tuesday instead of watching some boring videos. Anyways that enough going off track. So we will be leaving Wednesday morning and probably get there in the late afternoon. We are going to rest and relax until the screening of Toy Story 3 the next day, Thursday May 27. On Friday the twenty eighth we are going to go to the Disney museum in San Fransisco and see what the is like. On Saturday the twenty ninth we are going to go to my favorite place in the world, The redwood national forest. We are going to spent the day going through there. Then we will head back home on that Sunday. It should be a fun trip. I am really looking forward to it. Usually we go on a longer trip but because we had to move we have to pay more rent so we can't afford to go on a longer trip. I am still happy though because while this is a short trip I get to go to some of my favorite places ever. I get to go to the redwood national forest, which I hope I can go to every year. I also get to go to Pixar studios, the place that makes some of my favorite movies of all time. So after this trip I have to get back into work mode. I have to try to work on writing some more to get more practice. I also am thinking about maybe getting a job but only if it is at a movie theater or a book store because those jobs are still related to the career I want to pursue. So hopefully it is I great summer, I need it.

Almost Done

It's close to the end for this semester of college and I can not wait until it's done. There is a lot of things I want to do this summer, but that will be material for a different blog. For this blog I am going to go over what I thought about this semester and what I hope for next semester. Overall this semester was not as good as last semester. I can't really explain why I didn't like this semester as much as last semester. Especially considering that last semester wasn't fun really either. I guess last semester had less work then this semester had. Well not necessarily less work overall but last semester did have a lot less weekly work and they work I did have was more along the line of a few big projects that you get the semester to work on. This is more of the style of learning that I did throughout high school. For my four years of high school I went to a charter school in Tustin. The charter school is basically a hybrid combination of homeschooling, independent study, and classes at the actual school. Much like the way college works, I went to school about two to three times a week, classes were two hours long, and the rest of the work was done at home. This prepared me better for college and arranging my time to get my work done. I did this very well in my first semester but for some reason I just wasn't able to do it this semester. That's why I think this semester was not as good as last semester because with so much assignments due weekly it made me have to adjust how I have been working for the last couple of years. Hopefully next semester I will be able to get back into the groove, get all my work done, and enjoy all my classes.

As for my classes I took this semester they were not as good as I hoped they would be. The biggest disappointment was the Native American history class I took. It was just to boring. The teacher took three hours to explain one insignificant point and then a few minutes to explain an interesting point. The thing that was really annoying about the class was that you never knew what was going on until you went to class. He gives a syllabus but it does not break down weekly what we are going to be doing. I like to know what I am going to be learning about ahead of time. Anyways the class was just a disappointment because I really was hoping I would love the class. The other class I didn't like was my math class. Of course almost everyone doesn't like math. What I didn't like is that everything, the book, quizzes, and homework were all online so I have no idea why I even had to go into class because it basically was an online class. The rest of my classes were not too bad. Oh well hopefully next semester will be better.

Unexpectedly loving that movie

This is happening more and more often. I see a trailer for a movie and it looks really bad or stupid, but when I go see the movie when I either have a free ticket, someone else wants to see it, or there is nothing else to see, I end up loving the movie. It is very annoying because the trailer makes the film seem like a totally different kind of movie but I after I see it it turns out to be something I actually really like. I hope they stop making trailers that are made to appeal to a certain demographic when the movie is really not for that group. If the trailer would have just showed what the movie really was about then I probably would be able to better decide if I want to see the movie or not, but when they make this really bad trailers it becomes difficult. The most recent example I can think of is the movie Kick-Ass. When I first saw the trailer I thought it looked like a teenage PG-13 superhero spoof, but man was I wrong. After hearing all the controversy and complaints about one of the characters in the movie I decided I should go see if the movie is really worth fussing over. The big controversy was sparked by the character hit-girl who is a twelve year old girl who kills bad guys and swears a lot. When I first heard about the controversy I thought that that did sound horrible, but then I remembered how a lot of people, especially parents like to exaggerate things so they can try to get rid of it. So I went to see the movie. It was nothing like the trailer. The movie was a very hard R rated action movie with some comedic elements but mostly dark comedy. So I was mad because I would have seen the movie the weekend it came out if I knew it was like it was and not like the crappy trailer. On the controversial side it was as extreme as they complained about, the girl kills people, cusses a lot, and she is only a kid. There is one thing that the people complaining forgot to talk about and that was why the kid was this way. The people complaining gave the impression that the little girl did all this stuff because it would be "cool," but that is far from the truth. In the movie they give a very good and believable explanation for this girls behavior. Here father was put in jail for outing a crooked cop and while in jail his wife is murdered by the people the crooked cops worked for. So ever since he got out of jail he became hellbent of getting revenge and in the process he trains his daughter to help him. With a crazy parent like that it is more understandable why a little girl would be killing people because her father who she loves told her to because it was to kill the murderers who killed her mother. Well anyways back to the topic. I am glad I decided to see the movie Kick-Ass even thought the trailer made it out to be a bad movie. I am always glad when I unexpectedly stumble across something that I never thought I would like but end up loving it.

T.V. Show Watching Mood

For about the last week I have been on a big T.V. show kick. For some reason out of the blue I decided that I wanted to watch more T.V. shows. First it should be known that I don't really watch very many T.V. shows and the few that I do watch are starting to get a little boring. So I find it extremely weird that for some unknown reason I would feel like watching more T.V. shows. I guess it could be possible that I have grown a little tired of watching feature length films. It also might be that I feel like watching something shorter then normal. I am not entirely sure why I have been in a T.V. show watching mood but I can saw that what I have been watching has been pretty good. I have watched a lot of T.V. shows this last week so I am going list what I have been watching and give my thoughts on the shows. Here is the list:

Firefly- As I have discussed in a previous blog I have recently discovered this show that I am really enjoying. The only thing that has chanced since my last blog is that I have since watched all fourteen episodes. I liked where the show was going and it is really too bad that the show got canceled because a lot of the episodes were leading up to a lot of interesting things. Fortunately after the show was canceled it sold so well on dvd that the creator of the show, Joss Whedon, was able to get financing to make a feature length film tying up some loose ends from the show. The film is called Serenity and along with the show I also watched this movie. I thought it was good but It still left me wanting more from this shows universe.

The Big Bang Theory- I was a little skeptical going into this show. I don't really know why especially because a lot of the stuff in the show is the type of stuff I like. well this last week I finally decided to give it a chance. I got the first disc of season one from Netflix and quickly watched all six episodes on the disc. I have since added the remainder discs from season one to the top of my queue. I was surprised I really liked the show. I mean it was not amazing but it did have enough interesting and funny stuff to keep me watching. I will see were it goes from here when I get the next couple of discs, if I am going to watch the next couple of season or not.

Party Down- This is a comedy show from Starz channel. I watched the first season a while ago and this last week started to watch the second season. It is a decent show, nothing to great but not horrible. It has some funny and entertaining bits that make me at least a little interested in seeing the next episodes.

X-Files- I own all the seasons on dvd. After watching the first two seasons I just started buying the season dvds because I loved the show. I was almost towards the end of season seven, out of nine seasons, a few months ago but for some reason I have been kept from finishing the season and moving on to the rest. So this past weekend I decided that I should get back on track and try to finish the series by the end of summer. Hopefully I will have time to but I was able to watch two episodes this weekend so hopefully that is a good sign.

Those are all the shows I watched in the last week. It is a lot more T.V. shows then I usually watch in a week. Let's see what next week is like.