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"False Hope" is America

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Recently, a black man was murdered by a white police officer. Nationwide anger and sadness spread like wildfire and there were protests on the streets. People called for murder charges to go out to these officers, and for no more innocent black men to be killed. Does this sound familiar? It feels weird to say that the death of Laquan McDonald happened six years ago, and weirder still to say I don’t remember half of the names of boys like Laquan who were wrongfully killed. There are too many to count, and the saddest part of all of this is that most people will eventually forget about George Floyd. It is a cruel cycle: a black man is killed, people riot, the officer is caught and reprimanded but not enough, and we move on. We yell and burn and attack, thinking this is the last one that will be killed, like police officers will say “Oh, he was the 150th? I guess I’ll stop being racist then.” We love to hope that the cycle will end, yet deep down nothing will ever be enough. The Great G
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Journal 4/27

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If you had to assign your current mood a color, what would it be and why? My current mood color would be FFAF6E, which if you look that up on google, is a calm-ish orange shade, which is similar to an orange sorbet/creamsicle, or a nice sunset. I chose this color because I'm in a good mood and the weather is getter warmer and orange is a great color. It's not intense like traffic cone orange and it's not frighteningly reddish like blood orange.  Drop a comment below if you are also enjoying this color!! How has your relationship with celebrities changed? I love how certain celebrities are giving back by being interactive with the public and stuff. Jim Halpert from the office show has a youtube channel where he gets famous people on a zoom call or something I haven't seen it. Frank Ocean finally dropping more music ( Dear April and Cayendo ). Another example: Florence Pugh has been posting videos of her cooking, dancing, and having fun on her Instagram
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Journal 4/22

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How was the recent holiday (if you celebrated a holiday)? The most recent holiday our family celebrated was Easter. Usually we spend Easter dinner with our cousins, who live in Lincoln Park, but this time we ate separately. We didn’t get any decorations out, and we didn’t put as much effort into the food, but I shouldn’t be complaining because I’m pretty lucky.  I don’t know anyone affected by the thing, yet. Plus Easter is a wack holiday already. Who even is the Easter Bunny and what does he have to do with the ascension of Christ? We all complacently accept his customs without even questioning why. It’s probably because the Christians couldn’t come up with anything good so the atheists came along and said: “Let’s wear pastel shirts and hide eggs for the children to play with.” Anyway, to answer the question, it was good. How are you feeling about spring? I have mixed feelings about spring, because I hate early spring and love late spring. Late spring is the equivalent
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Journal Entry 4/9

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Are you spending your time differently? What are you doing more/less of? Since school has been temporarily cancelled, I've been watching a lot more movies than I usually do. Normally I watch 3-4 every week – one or two during the school week and 2 on Saturday and Sunday – but now that I have more time I've been watching as much as I can and reading more frequently too. I've also had more time and more motivation to work out most days and to catch up on sleep. And now that school basically starts at 9:00, I've had time to make a good breakfast.  I think that in general, when my schedule is the exact same every single day, life can become monotonous and fly by. But now that there is a break in the schedule, I feel like things have slowed down and I am more in control of my time. I'm trying to not fall back into my old habits of procrastination and spend my time here productively. Because soon the quarantine will be over, and it will be summer, and the last se
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Junior Theme Reflection

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My paper was about the Disney empire, and why their growth was bad for the industry. It explores not only how Disney turned from a small comic studio to a billion dollar conglomerate, but also how its growth affects smaller theaters, independent filmmakers, and us. Disney is a money making machine, and everything it does is fine-tuned to maximize profit, and that means, sometimes, manipulating us. With the release of Disney Plus and its established ownership of Hulu, Disney has turned our society from people who go out to the movie theater once a week to people who binge watch on our phones every night. "Eight of the top eight highest grossing films of 2019 were made by Disney" (CNBC). When I started my research, I was set on exposing Disney to all of their wrongdoings. But as my research went on, and as I wrote the counter-argument and interviewed an executive at Disney, I noticed that Disney is definitely not a monopoly. They may be big and have a lot of control, yet i
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Education

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https://auburnseminary.org/voices/naming-racism-in-high-school-one-muslims-story/ When I was younger, I loved learning. I was always reading books and was asking questions constantly. Because of this, my parents thought I would become an amazing student, and that I would love school. But each day I would come home from 2nd grade angry, saying that I didn’t learn anything. I remember hating the month-long unit we had on cursive and the pages and pages of show-your-work problems when I already knew the answer. It felt wrong, and every day after that I dreaded–and still dread–waking up and going to school every morning, forced to answer their questions and to learn nothing. In Between the World and Me , by Ta-Nehisi Coates, education’s “façade of morality” is critiqued and called out, and he explores the unintended effects on children by the school system.  Despite its core mission to teach and grow students, sometimes schools teach values that do not directly correlate with real l
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Are Movies Ruined?

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Far and away,  Joker  (2019) is the most divisive film of the year. This Joaquin Phoenix led film is about the origin story of the classic comic book villain, the Joker (obviously), a troubled reject from society, and in the same way that the comprable character Travis Bickle exudes violence in the film Taxi Driver (1976), many claim Arthur Fleck poses as a potential inspiration for real world predators, including mass shooters . In a modern society where we can't be too careful about what we say, this movie begs the question:  are movies ruined? Do our 'woke' societal values restrict original and controversial media? Don't worry, because the answer is no. The reason why the worry about this R-Rated flick confuses me is because people are acting like violent movies didn't exist before today. Earlier this year, Ari Aster wrote and directed a film WAY more gruesome than the Joker called Midsommar (2019), and it KILLED at the box office , bringing in over 300%
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