A History of Blogs

*Disclaimer* 

In the spirit of blogging I have decided that I MUST insert every thought that passes through my head as it occurs, regardless of the value of the content to the topic.

So, the teacher gives the class an assignment like any other and I approach it with relative apathy (sadly, like any other) until I realize that it is somewhat unique, as far as assignments go.
I have been told to write a blog.  In all honesty I have never truly held the remotest interest in blogging whatsoever, but I feel as though this is a prime opportunity for me to expand my horizons.  Thus, I am left to decide how to begin a blog about ... well, blogs.
What better place to start than at the beginning?

Progression of the Blog
Blogs began as an online diary sort of thing in the early 1990s; people recorded their day, including details ranging from how the new puppy peed on the carpet to the boyfriend who doesn’t put the toilet seat down, etc.  Nothing that couldn’t be done in a paper journal, but hey, we’re on the computer more and more as it is; we might as well get our money’s worth out of the internet service we already pay for.

By about 2000, the blog had grown exponentially in popularity, and today anyone can write a blog about whatever they want. They range from personal diaries to intense politically themed centers of discussion.
Regardless of the purpose of a blog, one can certainly manage to enjoy them (and if not, then perhaps you can compose your blog about how much you deplore the idea of blogging and the “miserable” lives of bloggers, etc.).
*RANDOM TANGENT* 
Someone ought to devise a clear method of inserting sarcasm into certain forms of text, with some sort of undisputed punctuation.  My life would then be complete. (Am I being sarcastic??? Exactly.)

Types of Blogs
There exists in the vast expanses of the internet a wide range of blogs, and often finding the one you want to read can be somewhat of an ordeal. Thus, I have taken it upon myself to distinguish the different variations for you. The omnipotent Wikipedia recognizes several types of blogs, which I will now attempt to summarize as accurately as possible (of course with some of my own personal opinion peppered in for rhetorical purposes).

·      Personal Blogs – epitomized by such social networking sites as Twitter, they tend to write incessantly of the minor details of life, often posted solely for personal entertainment with the cleverness of one’s own words.  Truly sentimental ones that contain any value almost never rise to fame because the ones composed by egotistical celebrities overshadow the homegrown, quality ones.

·      Corporate and Organizational Blogs – blogs created by companies that are desperate to be the first of their competition to reach their customers in the most obscure ways possible.  They often entice customers to come to their blog by offering some form of compensation for visiting, which I personally have never heard of being useful.  (If you’ve ever visited a blog-type site that claimed to offer some type of coupon sort of deal, and you were successful in redeeming your minor prize, I shall alert the media.)

·      Genre Blogs – these blogs focus on one specific topic, ranging from music to art, politics to travel, badly annotated pictures of cats to badly animated pictures of dogs, etc.  I am almost certain that there exists a blog for nearly every topic our meager human minds could imagine, and if there is not one for the topic of your choosing, one can certainly endeavor themselves into creating one. For instance, no one has established a blog on frozen peas, and, if you so wish, feel free to invalidate this statement by creating a blog dedicated to frozen peas.

·      Media Type Blog – this category includes Vlogs (video logs), linklogs (blogs consisting of links to other sites), photoblogs (picture logs), and the ever-popular Tumblr. These blogs are perfect for those of us who are far too lazy to write and/or too untalented to compose or create anything of worth. BUT, they do know what is in good taste, and can identify and relay quality information to others.

This is not to limit the freedom with which one can create a blog, but rather to attempt to categorize a majority of the existing ones.  Again, the range of blogs on the Internet are vast, many are made just for fun, and others with more serious and professional undertones.

My Blog
So, if I were to write a blog, what would it be about? Well, using this as a dry run, I can honestly say there is no possible way to narrow down all of the possibilities.  After intensively researching many blogs (a.k.a. mindlessly surfing the web for hours on end, potentially damaging my eyesight and as the only sign of remaining life, producing an occasional chuckle every ten or so minutes) I have concluded that I am not yet ready to tackle the business of blogging.
I will admit, I have certainly talked down blogs more than I have admitted to their intrinsic value.

However, as I delved into this new world of writing, I have developed a much greater appreciation for blogging as a whole. Of course there still exists an indeterminable number of people that could not take any activity less seriously, producing only pure garbage that the global community will forever shun and be embarrassed about, but that is not to say that there is nothing out there worth reading. In fact there is much out there worth reading.
And so I encourage you to read and maybe even follow a blog if you haven’t already. Perhaps you’ll StumbleUpon something you enjoy after all.

Thoughts on my "blog" please comment or e-mail me at jacob.martin@studentmail.fcps.edu
Compliments preferred, criticism grudgingly accepted :)

You Know You Like It

So I had previously planned to write about how amazing being a twin is, and how everyone else should envy me. But then I saw Bridesmaids on Friday and decided to change my topic.

Bridesmaids, starring Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph, had to be one of the funniest movies I'd ever seen. I'm not going to prattle on about the movie, though. I'm just saying, GO SEE IT. But, anywho, a scene at the end of the movie stood out to me and made me think about how other movies have used the same technique to make the movie better; A song and dance scene.

Now I know some of you (cough cough, Nicole) will probably roll your eyes at the idea of singing and dancing in a movie. "IT'S CORNY! SO DUMB! UNREALISTIC!" But you know you like it.

In great movies such as Shrek, 500 Days of Summer, and Ella Enchanted there are dance scenes either at the end, or throughout the movie that are memorable. However, none of these movies can be classified as musicals. They just happen to have musical sequences in them. So to all the people who hate on Rent or Hairspray or Chicago, let me ask you this? Don't lie.

How attractive was Gordon Levitt in 500 Days of Summer when he started dancing in the streets to Hall and Oat's, "You Make My Dreams Come True"? If I can answer that question, Pretty. Darn. Attractive.

But back to my point, dance sequences are loveable.

Watch the one at the end of Shrek. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUqP3xva__I 

You know you liked it.

Music brings a fun side out of any movie. And even if the movie is fun already, it adds on to the heaping pile of joy. Actors can't very easily fake good dancing, and its too funny to watch them dance badly. In Bridesmaids when Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph dance together, any insecurity I felt towards this movie to that point was vanished. It earned an A in my book, when maybe without that dance scene it might have earned an A-. Maybe even a B+!

Keep this in mind as you hate on movies where people hope to sweep you away with their musical ability. You pretend you don't, but you know you like it.

 If you deny this still, TELL ME. >: ( molly.everett@studentmail.fcps.edu

Procrastination.

Yea. We all do it. We can't help it. But why?

                        

       We've all been in this ladies position. She's left all that work till the last minute, and is overwhelmed. She feels as though there is no way that she'll ever be able to finish this crazy amount of work.  Pretty soon she'll be beating herself over the head with a rolling pin wondering what point there is to life. Oh well.
      Yet the sad truth is that there is no real cure for procrastination. It's a disease which has plagued the human race since our beginning. Obviously, it is the sole reason we have taken so long to evolve. I mean really, hundreds of millions of years is stretching it a bit. Cavemen were simply having too much fun clubbing eachother and lighting stuff on fire to want to do anything else. Who can blame them? That doesn't sound like too bad a life.



     Look at this dude. He's happy as can be. Why would he want to waste time "evolving" into the modern day human being which is forced to deal with such atrocities as soggy cereal, paper cuts, and carpal tunnel syndrome. That's no fun.  He'd rather just chill with his buddies making unintelligible grunting noises.
     Sadly though, our caveman friend will look procrastination in the face and confront it. He will throw away his club, stop grunting like an idiot, and set to the task of evolving. After a few bajillion years, he's done it. Behold, the homo sapiens:


     Well, one can't really be sure that caveman did a great job at the whole evolving thing, but at least he gave it a shot. Yet one is forced back to the question; why do people procrastinate.
      Some would make the case that it's because we are all inherently lazy. While that may have some validity to it, it can't be prescribed as the reason for procrastination. When I'm procrastinating, I've been known to walk the dog, do the dishes, or even clean my room. These are not the tasks of a lazy person. In that case, Those are simply the lesser of two evils.
      Psychologists would say something along the lines of "It stems from one's innate incapabilities to confront his inner self and..." Blah blah blah. That's a load of baloney as well.
      Here's my official diagnosis. Procrastination happens because...We don't like to do stuff! Yep. That's it. If I don't like doing my homework, I will procrastinate, and eat a bagel.  If I liked doing my homework, it would already be done, and I wouldn't be sitting here right now typing away.
     In that light, procrastination is really quite simple. The analogies are infinite.
-If I don't like eating tomatoes, I will not walk into the kitchen and shove a tomato in my mouth.
-If I don't like standing on my head, I will not torture myself in that manner.
Which brings us back to....
If I don't want to do something, I will avoid doing it at all costs.
Procrastination.
      Now that that's been determined, It's clear that nothing can be done about procrastination. You can't make someone like something that they don't already like. Sometimes, that happens on its own. But you can't make it happen. If someone goes to bed not liking bananas, you can't force him to like bananas when he wakes up in the morning. Most likely, he will hate them even more, and you as well. So, unfortunately, we are stuck with procrastination till the end of time.

For any questions, please email me at john.wilder@studentmail.fcps.edu

“Let me put it to you this way… ‘wat u up 2 tday? mondayz r the wurst.’”

dus it bthr u whn ppl rite lik dis on the net? its lik there speakin a diffrnt languig tht mkes no sens unls u tak time 2 luk @ it.

Sure, that might have been leaning a bit towards the extreme end of the spectrum, but this is the sort of thing that is surely a common sight to all who use the Internet. Now I don’t know about any of you out there, but being the “grammar Nazi” that I am this sort of thing just bugs me. And I’m sure that I’m not the only one.

 

I mean I can understand when some people make mistakes, since spell checks aren’t available everywhere, nor are they terribly reliable in certain circumstances. Everyone makes mistakes after all. Not to mention, the Internet is admittedly not the same as an English classroom, or even a writing center, where spelling and grammar should be kept at a high level.

Even so, I honestly wonder why people must insist on typing with shorthand methods like that. Sure, it can save time for whoever is typing the message by shortening a few words. Even then, this doesn't apply to those people who, for some reason, feel that replacing "was" with "wuz" makes everything better. In addition and unfortunately, I don’t think those who are on the receiving end of such messages can really say that they've saved anything.

In my opinion, the shorthand writing of the Internet is simply a mess to sort through. For all of the time saved by the sender of the message, the reader would have to spend an equal or greater amount of time wading through the disjointed letters to piece together the meaning on their own, or at worst even misunderstanding and horribly skewing the intended message. Even those virtuosos in the mystical art of removing letters from words have to spend some time looking at the message in order to know what the sender was trying to tell them. These few seconds must, of course, once again be made up to relieve our busy schedules, and so the cycle of shorthand continues in one everlasting eyesore.

With the amount of exposure to the Internet and other shortened speech forms, such as the similar concept of “txt tlk” for texting with cell phones, kids are getting the impression that these sort of casual abbreviations are acceptable.

They’re not.

...Okay, okay, so maybe they’re not so bad when you’re talking with friends. But even so, excessive use of it in every part of a person’s life can have some pretty damaging effects on their English skills regardless. If you want proof, look no further than our nation’s “cherished” SAT, where scores for both reading and writing have been, and still are, on a steady decline. (Of course, for what it’s worth, math scores are getting better, so I hope you can read those charts!)

I’d honestly hoped that students would at least be required to type or write their essays and other English homework properly, and would thus be able to get practice with typing more than a staggering nine words in actual English, preventing this "streamlining" of language. Well, curses, foiled again. Regrettably, looking into the matter only confirms the issue that students are perfectly fine with using “u” as an appropriate substitution for “you” in their analyses of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

In the end, sure, maybe u can get ur point across with one or two letters when you're chatting with your friends. Have fun explaining to your boss what your memo says in a few years.

All in all, I guess that's about it with this little rant of mine. If you want to talk with me, feel free to send me a message! (No shorthand, plz please.)

Promenade!...a.k.a, Prom!

The anticipation of preparing for prom and being asked, wears on girls' minds, well, at least my mind, ALL THE TIME!  Yes, I'll admit, it's kind of pathetic, but honestly, as soon as senior year started, it’s been all I could think about: finding the perfect dress, the right heels, accessories, hairdo, make-up, awesome ride (who wants to get driven by their parents? Not I) and so on and so forth, but what about a date? When does he come around? From a single persons stand point, going with girlfriends is always a blast, but having a date would make this particular occasion even more special. Ha, Guys think they have it rough when in actuality, it is definitely the girls! We are the ones who have to WAIT for the guys to come and ask. I mean come on, how much time do guys need to prep?! Just do it already! Now, I'm not sour, all I'm saying is that if guys want to ask a girl to prom, don't over think it, just do it. Find a way to personalize what you are going to do. We're girls, we are able to tell who put in effort! In the end, we'll most likely say yes...unless you spell out P-R-O-M in meat patties…yeesh.

Wow, hope this blog doesn't make me sound desperate for a date, because I'm absolutely not. I'm 110% sure that if I don't get asked , prom will still be amazing!! Well, that's only if it's not cancelled because a hand full of super cool seniors decided to start an oh-so harmless food fight that just so happened to end up on national televsion. But any-who, I am excited none-the less.

  

Don't let this be you!

 What TO do!

I remember back when I was a sophmore, I saw this one girl get asked to prom, and I got to hand it to the guy, he did a good job! The guys dressed up in a Tarzan costume, because the girl he was asking played Jane in a Disney themed show, and waltzed  into her chorus class with a beautiful bouquet of flowers while the entire choir sang (we were informed ahead of time) one of the songs from the disney movie inserting the words "Will you go to Prom with me"?  Extremely cute, and of course, the girl said yes! But hold the phone, girls can ask guys to Prom too, I suppose--It's not exactly my favorite idea, but it is an option. For girls tips, click me!-this ones for the LADIES! For guys,  Click Here! This ones for the FELLAS!

<----- What NOT to do!

 So anyways, just to let you curious readers know, I indeed have my prom dress, which is the FIRST and foremost IMPORTANT thing to get--everything else is down hill after the dress, seriously! I got it actually a year in advance, NOT becasue I tried to beat all the other 100+ girls in search of finding a dress--worried that I'd have a twin at prom, but because I did a pageant over the summer and didn't want my parents paying hard earned cash for another formal dress. Which brings up another topic, be SMART when preparing for prom! Know that you don't have to pay trillions of dollars for this occasion! Alright, enough ranting, here's something for YOU my star shine! Here is a website informing you of all the do's and don'ts when it comes to prom, girls addition--Click Me!



Do!



Don't



                                          

SENIORS, prom is just around the corner!! *Breath, Biana, Breath* Be excited!...so I wont feel as much of a dork as I do now! I sure hope it's as cracked up to be as Hollywood makes it! Hope the tips helped!

 *If you want to chat with me more,

E-mail me at Briana.Beale@studentmail.fcps.edu

published by: Briana Beale

Life with a Puppy

About 4 months ago my family got a new puppy, Dixie. We were so excited to have another dog in the house and to have a playmate for our 2 year old poodle, Jazz.  Jazz was the perfect puppy, well, not perfect, but as close to perfect as one who likes to chase squirrels can be. He even poses for pictures!

Little did we know that Dixie would be the complete opposite of Jazz.

Dixie, as my mom describes her is, “hell on wheels”. When she was smaller, she didn’t follow the normal puppy sleep schedule of play-nap-play-nap-play-nap, instead choosing to conserve her energy and take only one nap in the middle of the day. To anyone who has never had a puppy, this might not seem so bad. But, believe me when you’re on Dixie-duty, you live for naptime.  

The hours that Dixie was awake, she required almost constant supervision. You couldn’t just watch her; you had to entertain her as well because a bored Dixie equals a Dixie getting into trouble. Your time is instead spent pulling tissues out of her mouth, wrestling shoes back, begging her to stop pulling on Jazz’s ears and telling her to stop jumping on the counter. Add to the mix having to take her out every 20 minutes or have to clean up a yellow puddle and you end up exhausted faster than she does. And this starts at 5:30 every morning and only ends when she (finally) goes to bed around 10:30, even on the weekends.

Oh, and you remember how I said we got her 4 months ago? Count back and you’ll realize that we got her in the winter. When it’s COLD. Who in their right mind gets a puppy in the middle of winter? My family, that’s who. Have you ever had to take a puppy out to go to the bathroom when it’s below freezing, the ground is covered in ice, and you have to wait through the most elaborate poo-dance known to dog-kind? Well, let me tell you that I wish I had bothered to put on a coat that night because it was really hard to tell Dixie to hurry up with my teeth chattering.

Luckily, as Dixie gets a little older and a wee bit more experienced with the way things work, things get better and I couldn’t imagine life without my little black ball of fur.

Interested in getting a puppy and want to know what you're getting yourself into? Email me here, then go check out Dixie and Jazz's breeder's website.

"Undo what heredity's done to you"

I know that based on my title you may think I'm going to express my deepest feelings and rant about the unfairness of genetics in my blog. Nope. I'm going to talk about hair dye. Yeah, you heard me. Hair dye.What can I say? I love dying my hair. Not pink, blue, or green; but normal colors. There's something thrilling about having the power to change even something heredity has given to you. Not that I dislike my natural hair color (although i'm not sure what it is at this point...). Instead, I simply become bored of the current shade of my hair. In fact, I had in mind something similar to this color for next time (maybe a little less...red.)

 Granted, I've only dyed my hair 3 times. Gold streaks, almost completely blond, and even black through a slight mishap. I mean, the box did say medium brown. Cheap cosmetics can be so decieving. Which brings me to box dyes in general. Ahh, box dyes. So convenient, so inexpensive. An excellent place to find reviews of different hair dyes is here or email me to get my opinion(so you don't end up with black hair after you CLEARLY bought a brown dye!) However, most boxed shades fade like there's no tomorrow. In late december, I used this one right here.

My hair ended up about 5 shades darker than I expected, but that's beside the point. Within a few weeks, my friends were interrogating me relentlessly about why I had dyed my hair lighter again. Sadly, I hadn't touched a box of the stuff since December. Tsk, tsk. It's amazing how quickly people notice even the SLIGHTEST change in your appearance. I thought people were supposed to be more concerned with themselves to even notice the zits, make-up smudges, and hair malfunctions of their peers. Oh well. Of course there are plenty of upsides to this quick-fading characteristic of drugstore-brand hair colors. For example, if you simply want to try out a color but don't want to pay massive amounts of money at a high-end hair salon, head over to your local walmart and you can have that bleach blond hair you've always wanted by dinnertime.

...or not.