Today's Society

American society has taken a turn for the worst, and it has been noticeable now for years. A strong majority of Americans are either apathetic about important issues in their lives, and focus their time and energies on minuscule events and activities, such as Facebook and Twitter. A more connected society, energized by the Internet and expanding global communication, is always beneficial, but also leads to a population less focused on life and more focused on living in the cloud. We are all guilty of this crime, spending hours on Facebook and trying to contort ourselves as per society's "standards".

A few examples for the nonbelievers. Music, while debatable in a few notable exceptions, is made by computers and bought by a mindless, following crowd. Movies are laden with more special-effects than acting, with exceptions, of course, and being cool and "hip" has been somehow connected with material purchases, such as "hip" clothes and having, pardon the French, a "douschebaggery" personality. In my opinion, this harkens back to the 50s, a decade of conformity, driven by post-war boom and the startling similarities of the suburbs.

Perhaps the worst of this disturbing trend can be traced to the expanding technology that has pervaded our lives since the dot-com boom. We buy expensive cell phones with expensive plans to communicate with each other, though often through impersonal text messaging, often with deliberately misspelled words. The Internet allows today's youth to escape their problems, and create a fake identity to be cooler in real life. This "u-turn logic" is destructive, and focuses more of our youth's focus on falsity rather than education and planning for the future. It's hard to imagine that today's generation will grow up to be responsible leaders in a world demanding more attention and leadership than ever, due to their seemingly inability to concentrate on anyone's problems other than their own.

Unfortunately, not much can be done to avert this trend. Unless one, such as a Luddite, can somehow destroy the global network we have managed to accomplish over the past decade or so, our society will continue to decay into a state of unoriginality and selfishness.

Sleep

I miss sleep. Its true. Remember there was a time when we would yell and kick and scream so we wouldn't have to go to bed, yeah , well that's definately changed. The insane amount of hw, extra-cur. actv. and other stuff that takes up time certainly takes up valuable sleeping time. Going to bed by 9:30 in elementary school was late. Going to bed by 10:30 in middle school was late. Now, 2 is the latest for me. What a dramatic change, I must say. Now, I know what you're thinking (i think) "Get off facebook, gmail, twitter, and all that time consuming stuff" That does sound like a good idea, but when I do, I just feel like someone might need the hw for a class and IM me, or a status on fb is really good, w/e. So I end up going to sleep late, and falling asleep around 2nd and 3rd period. I went to bed at 2 last night, partly because of a band thing that went to 9:30, but also because I just got bored, and as you might have seen, started this blog. But even worse is waking up at 6:30, knowing you got HALF the REQUIRED amount of sleep for a healthy life. On normal days I don't get home until 5 but that's still enough time. Oh well.

I got Halo ODST today, pretty excited. Yankees and Phillies first game tonight of the World series, should be good. Well, I better go now. Lots of *&%% to do

Started a blog

Well I mainly started this blog cause I get bored a lot when I'm doing hw (homework for the uninitiated), and I just need to let some stuff out, ya know. Anyway I hope I remember to write an entry once in a while. ok here goes.

Lol- Its not funny

If you've never heard of the phrase lol, you've been living under a rock for a while, haven't you. It means laugh out loud, grammatically incorrect if your the kind of person who obsesses over that. it used to be really just a weird nerd term, if i remember correctly. But now, people use lol even when something isn't funny, just to add something to a sentence, or lessen the blow of a rejection, for instance. Now i'm not saying I'm completely innocent, rather, I'm trying to fit in with the norm of things. Here's a sentence on one of my gmail chats:

"Lol did you finish the math hw"? "No lol I'm too lazY'

Think about how that sentence would sound without the lol. It would still work, in essence, but it feels just weird , kind of last decade. Anyway i'm done ranting about lol. I mean, was that guy really laughing out loud because he's too lazy? I doubt it. Same goes for lmao and rofl. Are you really rolling on the floor right now? To me, it seems like a sort of emotional expression of fear? boredom? IDK. I don't wanna seem like that guy who thinks cause he writes a blog he's awesome, but yeah, I really don't like the word lol. But you know what? I'm gonna use it anyway.