I just found this really cool site called Wordle.net, where you make a tag cloud out of your blog or website… so awesome! It makes this blog seem cool, which says a lot… great site, folks. Check it out.
My Wordle cloud URL: http://wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/116534/Maplewing%27s_Blog_Tags
Wow, I forgot about my blog… so yeah. Today is my brother’s birthday, yay. He’s 12. You know, I like other people’s birthdays a lot… you eat their cake, go to a cool restaraunt… haha, it sounds selfish but at least everyone has fun that way. I remember one year we got him trick candles. He couldn’t blow them out and in the end we had to go get an electric fan. Good times… Ok, this is the most boring entry in the world. Sorry.
Every day we live our lives surrounded by technology: we watch TV, we surf the net, we listen to our iPods, and we microwave burritos. But did it ever occur to you that you can actually liive without these “necessities”? We’re not talking amish people here, we’re focusing on tribes… specificically, the new one they discovered in the Amazon. (Not amazon.com, you bozo, the Amazon in Brazil!)
That’s right, there’s people out there who dye their skin with berries, wear animal skins, and hunt their dinner before they eat it. Or something along that stereotypical description. And we happened to fly over their heads in a “big metal bird”. AKA an airplane. I wonder what went through their heads as they watched in awe and probably terror. This is a tribe that’s basically preserved like jam (haha); staying.. uh… tribal since tribes were first common (whenever that was). This was probably a defining moment in their secluded lives. Generations from now, they’ll sit around and tell stories of the big bird that flew overhead. That is, if we don’t barge in there and welcome them to reality. What would they say? Probably, they would pelt us with arrows, then stare at our different clothes and then pronounce us demons. Fun. And if we sat them in front of a computer or a TV, what would they do? I don’t think they would sleep for days. Or, on the flip side, they could go into shock and “sleep” instead for days at a time. Only one way to find out… nah, just kidding.
This little story involves my camera, my brother, a twist-tie, and a flower with a broken stem. It was last night, maybe around nine, when my brother Mike came into my room holding a glass with flowers in it.
“Take a picture,” he said. So I did. Then I noticed that one of the flowers had a broken stem. He’d noticed it too and he shrugged and just told me to ignore it. But instead I became obsessed with the broken flower, so he took back the glass.
A few minutes later, he returned holding the glass. I looked at the two flowers and started cracking up, because the broken one had a twist-tie wrapped around its broken stem, supporting it. Like a neck brace for flowers!
The “broken” flower and its friend, Bob.
The pattented “Stem Support” for injured flowers!
A happy ending for Bob and Broken Stem (that’s his indian name)
Okay, so a few days ago I was eating one of my favorite desserts in the whole wide world, pistachio pudding. But then a fly flew smack into my face. Annoying, yes, but not too alarming. I continued to eat my pudding.
Well, I sensed that something was wrong. I looked down into the bowl and found, disgustingly, the same fly in my pudding. Being the photo-freak that I am, I immediately ran for my camera and snapped a few photos of the whole incident. I am happy to report that I will still eat pistachio pudding. The fly, sadly, seems to be over its pudding intake. Too bad. Flies miss out on a lot. But this one now has his picture loose on the internet.
Ever seen one of those motivational speakers who come and give their little lecture and then end up depressing the h-e-double toothpicks out of you? …This is sort of like that. Today at school they showed us this movie on “choosing the right friends”. Well, okay. So they dimmed the lights and turned on their triple screen things, and let me tell you: it was not pleasant. They started going on and on about how decisions can launch your life into despair and doom and all those other d words. They played 911 calls of hysterical people screaming “It’s… it looks like a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Please help!” and you hear sobbing in the background. Then they talked about this girl who comitted suicide. Her mother is on the verge of a breakdown on camera and her brother keeps saying “I failed to portect her. I failed. I failed…”
I mean, why do they show us this stuff? I walked out of there feeling worse than I did going in. If I hadn’t been sitting with my friends and talking to them off and on, I’d be like a walking funeral service. Well, maybe not that bad. But I heard a kid actually cried.
There was this part about a drunk driver, and how they made him walk around with a sing that said “I killed two people while driving drunk”. And he had to tape the victims’ pictures to the back of his “offender” card and carry it around for ten years. I mean, that’s just plain cruel. It was obvious he felt bad, so they made him face his crime every day for ten years. He had to see the autopsies of the dead people too. Very depressing.
They even made little kids, like, kindergarteners, stand in front of the camera and say things like “When I grow up I want to be a drug dealer”. What did those kids think about saying that? I wonder if some of ‘em were actually influenced. And the catchphrase was “Sometimes people are not who they used to be”. Which still is no reason to make little children say they wanted to get drunk or backstab their friends.
I hate these presentations. I really do. Nothing can put a nice little raincloud above your head like those school “awareness programs”. Well, I’m aware now. I’m aware that I never want to see one of those things again.
While my computer was freezing itself up, I was desperately clicking links to get it working. It’s ok now, but I stumbled upon this link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/may/19/health.health
Now, my question to America is on the topic of using hybrid embyos for stem cells. Why would you bother going through the trouble making a hybrid for this purpose when you could just use a human one? Does forming in an animal egg make the embryo any less deserving of life? I think creating hybrids for stem cells is ridiculous, but the hybrids themselves aren’t a bad concept. Still, why is it considered bad to harvest stem cells from a human embryo but not from a hybrid embryo? And I thought we knew how to get stem cells from human skin, anyway. Now I’m confused. But all in all, genetic engineering gets one big double-jointed thumbs up from me. DNA is the building blocks for life, right, so why don’t we build something with it?
PS… Hmm, my third entry today. Woot!
I just found out about this, but I want to do it anyway. Typical of me, really. You’re suppossed to blog every day for a whole month. Dunno if I’ll be able to do it with all the computer problems we’ve been having, but I’ll give it a shot.
…Here we go, in no particular order:
1) Old black and white movies… I just can’t stand ‘em.
2) Fur coats… don’t even get me started with the whole ‘cruelty to animals’ lecture.
3) Hitler’s moustache… have you ever seen it? I mean, the thing looks like a dead caterpillar. By the way, I thought of something a while ago. “I was trying to swastika that fly but I got nazi-ated and I Hitler my dictator” Hahahaha! Stupid nazis.
4) The word “pet peeve” …What IS a peeve, anyway?!
5) Pre-ripped jeans… Who came up with them, and why would you pay money for something that’s already ripped?
6) Writer’s Block!
7) People who dress their pets… it looks so wrong, and plus it’s just plain stupid. I think East-Of-Eden here from fictionpress.com has illustrated my point very well… see her poem here –> http://www.fictionpress.com/s/2510173/1/
8.) Snobby people
9) Historical fiction… it’s history, it’s over, why write about it?
10) Math
…I apologize to anyone who may have been offended by this. Except fur-wearers, nazis, and snobs.
Sarcasm warning! Not appropriate for serious adults, political people, or teachers. …Anyway. Moving on. In Life Skills I have to do a project on genetically engineered food. So today I did some research. Turns out that many people are actually against it. Not that I didn’t know that. But this sparked the little part of my brain that goes “Blog it! Blog it!” and here I am.
I have a few things to say about the concerns of genetically engineered food, which I will now call GE cause I’m lazy like that. First of all, I’m gonna address all that “OMG we’re tampering with nature” junk. We pollute the air with factories and cars. We cut down trees for mutliple reasons. We build schools on top of toxic waste (I should know from personal experience). Now you want to say that we’re tampering with nature? Shoulda thought of that a while ago, my friends.
Also, some people think it’s unsafe. Tell me, has anyone died yet from transgenic tomatoes or cloned cows? Didn’t think so. I had this discussion with my dad a while ago. We came to the conclusion that it probably won’t affect your health to eat GE foods. Especially the cloned animal part. Cloning isn’t risky. We don’t inject the clones with poison. It’s just like getting a normal cow with borrowed DNA. Like twins. Would you have a problem with eating twin animals? No? Then why fret over clones?
Finally, there’s all those people protesting on the lack of labeling on GE products. I agree with them; we deserve to know what we’re eating. However, the picture of a woman with a sign that says “Tested on kids. Not mother approved” is a bit melodramatic, eh? How are we suppossed to make scientific advances like this? I think America is over reacting. Now excuse me while I go eat my recombinant dinner.
