Good Television

Since the second half of September's kicking in, I finally get to have some shows I look forward to seeing every week. Summer really doesn't have any good shows... like at all, unless they're reruns. But there is hope, Whoville!!

The Office has got to be, without a doubt, the funniest show I've ever seen. Family Guy can't even trump it... well... most of the time. It's just one of those shows that everybody can appreciate, that has the perfect balance of believable and contrived situations, characters and lines, and it just plain brightens up my Thursdays. Plus, it doesn't rely on obscene or inappropriate jokes to land an audience of sustained viewers. You've just gotta love The Office (although, from experience, people that actually work in offices find it much less entertaining than those people who don't work in offices do).

Fringe is probably tied for my favorite show, coincidentally showing on Thursday too. It's a sci-fi, mystery kind of show that has gotten better and better with each consecutive episode that they make. Even though the first episode of the new season was an exception, I had yet to be able to predict ANY of the plot twists, even though they were all legitimate and not outlandish. It kept me guessing, fascinated, and excited for an entire season - which, to me, is the concrete definition of GOOD TELEVISION.

Heroes, on the other hand, has gone down the drain, and I mean FAST. It's this show about people that gain super powers after a solar eclipse with a lot of other hard-to-explain, hard-to-give-justice plot turns and stuff. In any case, though, starting from the second season, I found a lot of their main conflicts to fall back onto the same premise, and ultimately get really, really boring. This is what is called NOT GOOD TELEVISION. Note the differences.

In any case, I'm extremely excited for the Fall TV stuff goin' on, and am AMAZINGLY excited for the Lost Season Premiere in 2010. Speaking of series being good and bad, that show went from Good, to REALLY GOOD, to pretty bad, then back to Good, then to Better. I'm just plain excited, because that season finale had to be the most cliffhanger of an ending like ever.

Dignity/Shame

Of course, ignoring all of the degrees of things being harder to fight with dignity, or easier to surrender with shame, I think it's much, MUCH easier to fight with dignity.

Choosing to fight with dignity or surrender with shame is a single choice in my opinion. It's not an every-instance kind of deal, it's a habit. It's consistent with your character, who you are as a person, what your morals are. Fighting with dignity therefore is as simple as choosing to be the good guy or the bad guy. That said, it's not that you can't change sides of the force or anything; you have the ability to choose to act how you please. It's simply - coming from my experience - that what you choose to do (dignity/shame) is very consistent as you grow older and go throughout life.

I think I speak for everyone when I say Muhammad Ali (sorry if I spelled it wrong) did nothing but fight with dignity and pretty much become the best boxer in the history of the universe because of it.

Club Idea that needs some work

The People Watchers Club is an existing club at Yale University, and is actually an extension of Statistics, Psychology, and those kind of classes there. All the club does is watch people in different locations and make observations about their behavior. For example, a People Watchers Club field trip may consist of going to the Mall of American and observing how people behave there.

If things start to get experimental and risky, some of the club members may decide to apply stimuli to certain scenarios. While people are occupied with cluttering up a certain section of the mall, some club members may convince two or three people to go around, and see if any ripple effects take place. Another idea might be to take a field trip to a busy city and have some of the members play ultimate frisbee, or something of the like. As more and more members start off playing each progressive session, one might observe how the rest of the park-goers may react, join or avoid the game.

When I first heard about the People Watchers Club at Yale, I thought it was an amazing idea. I always enjoyed watching people do things, see what everybody tends to do or not do, usually in a comical sense; I had in mind more of a massive improvisational comedy group rather than an actual educational activity, but it can still be used both ways. For example, what if you had one hundred people all scattered through a section of the mall, and NONE OF THEM MOVED for about three or four minutes. What would people do? Think??

The main problems with this club getting started are a) we don't have a sponsor, b) we don't have a formalized goal, proposal or anything, and c) If we were to go on field trips, we also have no sponsorships/funds to make that possible. Once we get some of these situations resolved (at least the first two), we can actually make the People Watchers Club of Apollo High School a reality.

Money - What does it mean to me?

Money is nothing but a means of distribution of wealth, by definition. But to me, money means I can go get an ice cream shake at Coldstone whenever I have some of it.

Money's obviously important to me, let alone people. You've kind of gotta pay for stuff with it, because as of yesterday, you can't buy cokes in "tales of adventure" anymore. Acorns got banned along with that.

It's hard for a definitive resonse to "How much is enough" without any given context or constraint on such a question. I'll try and add an end to it: "How much is enough for someone to be happy?"
More reasonable, I think. Well, myself, in order to make someone happy, there isn't a limit to how much money is "enough" due to the fact that every single person is different in what would make them happy, and what ends they would have to meet in order to fulfill those wants. So, whenever you have enough money to where you can give to the community, confortably support your family, be able to have the fun you want to, and be able to support yourself after your young days are over, that's enough money for someone.

I forgot the second to last question, but money definitely is a method of making part of the world go 'round. Although it doesn't make ALL facets of society function the way they're supposed to, it does provide a distribution of wealth for the population of the world, and allows simple economics to function, giving us all the basic resources we need. It doesn't, however, make a family love each other, for example.

Have some fun/Sport Watchers Club

For those teachers that get all mad at practical jokes, little "activities" all us kids organize mid-class, and just do it for the heck of it - get a new job.

Sure, you're paid to teach English, or Math, or Biology or whatever, but if you're gonna get paid for doin' somethin', you might as well enjoy yourself, right?

I'm not gonna lie, I've tried to get a couple of my classes to do the wave SO MANY TIMES, and nobody ever does it because the teachers will get mad. And the thing is this isn't going to interrupt the educational process - it's just gonna make it more physically involving. Who wouldn't wanna do the wave after sitting for 75 minutes straight in History not listening to or learning about anything, just working?

On a related note, I was kind of running with the idea of the People Watchers Club, and was also thinking about how much fun the Boys' Soccer Games are to go to, because we've got a really funny and fun student section goin'. I was gonna end up makin' the idea for either the People Watchers Club, or the newly-introduced Sport Watchers Club.

All the Sport Watchers Club would consist of would be a dedicated student fan base that would attend all kinds of the school sporting events - and not just the major football and soccer and baseball games. Volleyball, Wrestling, Marching Band, Academic Team, Dance Team, Swimming, Tennis, and all that kinda stuff need some love too. Being in the club is easy - just sign up for some events you'll attend for sure, show up, cheer the kids on, and go home. Simple as that. Staying in would be more of the challenge, though. You'd have to attend so many events in a nine weeks, and behave yourself and legitimately cheer them on when you're there. You'd have to attend a wide variety of events, too. As kind of a reward or payoff for actively participating in the club, you could get discounts from the Spirit Store, or even free Spirit Wear, or things like that.

All that may sound too "schooly", but I figure it'd be fun and it'd make all the different activities really feel appreciated. It wouldn't hurt to throw in a few fifty-person cheers at a tennis match, just to show how excited everyone is. Or cheer in the middle of a golf course RIGHT in the other team's backswing... well, maybe less of the latter, but still, it'd be a lotta fun.

If You Really Want It...

For those of us that know about Marching Band stuff, here's a piece of wisdom for ya.

Daviess County has always been one of our most experienced rivals in competition, and has always had the reputation of being amazing. And to be honest, they're only bigger than we are and are all doing the same thing. Apollo High School has finally come across a chance to take Class AAAAA back BY STORM.

The Daviess County Band of Pride isn't up to their game.
This year, their band camp staff consisted of ENTIRELY new members, even including their Director. With all the inexperience laying all over the place, it's becoming hard for them to unify and keep it together. Sure, they're Daviess County, but no band's worth anything until they are ONE band, and not someodd players walkin in the same direction.

If the Apollo High School Marching Band will give it our very, very best, never give up, never quit, and work our absolute hardest until the end, we honestly have more of a shot at this point at making Semi-Finals than Daviess County does. When it's one week before our first competition, I just wanted to let everyone know that and get this thought into writing before we all give up and mosey around like we have for the past 4 years straight. You wanna make it to Semi-Finals? You wanna take ownership of your mistakes and fix 'em, rather than pretend they're not even there and forget about 'em in an hour?

I'm not going to let you.
Now is our time. Now is our chance. We strike NOW, because there may never be a chance this blatantly oppurtune in our lifetime. Marching Eagles, let's take 'em.

Gotta love Demetri Martin

In the possibly-different words of Demetri Martin, here's what I believe about this saying:

There's a saying... that people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. That's nice.
How about... no one should throw stones. That's just bad behavior, get it outta here!
My saying is no one should throw stones, regardless of housing situation.
Now, if you're TRAPPED in a glass house, and you have a stone to throw, then throw it!
What, are you an idiot?!
So really, it should be ONLY people in glass houses should throw stones.
GIVEN THAT they are trapped, and have a stone with them.
It's a bit longer than the original, but... yeah.