Weekly update: 7/14/10

No more titles, can never think of witty ones.

Anyway, hey everyone, hope you didnt miss this blog too much during the week. You can totally tell its summer because there has really been nothign major going on. There is something that happened over the course of the weekend that i'm nto gonna blog about. but ask if you wanna know.

speaking of whcih, i have a seque. You all remember how after Kal Penn's Charater in House M.D. committed suicide, everyone, including House, was off their game and such. that's how i felt these past few days. I had no punchyness/swagger/smarkyness or whatever you wanna call it. And it sucked. But i got it back today and it felt awesome.

Work this weekn has been going slow, which is funny, because thats how it was last year. the first week went by fast lats year, and then the middle two weeks went slow and the last 2 went by pretty fast. This afternoon went by fast, but the rest of the week has gone by slowly . the one thing i'm not looking forward to abotu thursdays where i work is the kids i work with have a double block (90 minutes) of language arts, which is reading and writing for the. and it feels slow as molasses to me, every time it appears (both last year and the one this year). I can't imagine how slowly it must go for the kids.

speaking of reading (look at me wiht the segue's this week), If i wanna be an advisor aide during NSO (new student orientation (which i'm already doing) for the freshman, i need to read the book theyre required to read. Called, Half of a Yellow sun, the book is 540 some pages and is by Chimamanda Adiche. Its really not grabbing me. it seems to be a charcater driven drama about a certain section in southwest Nigeria wanting independance fomr the government of the mian country. thats all fine and dandy, but the plot is very broken up as the book follows five charcaters: 1)a guy who is supposedly a revolutionary socialist in the state at the time, who has made a name for himself somehow. 2) his hosueboy 3) #1's mistress who we dont find out is his mistress until the chapter after her own family is introduced (her parents are remotely relevant so far) 4) an angsty, emo, british writer guy who doesnt seem to fit in with the culture or with the crowd that 5) the woman he has come to love ( who is the "twin" sister of the revlutionary socialist's mistress) hang out with. Now coming along to why i'm not liking this book, which may cause me to not be an advisor aide. It's dry, the only interesting dynamic is between the numbers 1-3 above, and the writing is very not captivating. That and the last few chapter have been stopped before they could end because Chimamanda feels compelled to put in something about the process of the actual writing of the book the british dude is researching. I am not being grabbed by this book at all, and its very slow to get going and to get me to actually care about the characters. Maybe if i knew some more about Nigeria and what it was like in the 1960's i would actually care about the atmosphere of the time and how that is a good context for the book.

Looking at the above paragraph, i can definlty say that last sentence is my real issue. The book assumes right out of the gate that its readers know something about Nigeria in the 1960's and how it's southwest region, Biafra, wanted to eb independant. I prefer to books that dont do this, and give some background wihtouth being dry.

one more slightly negative commentary piece. there was something that kind of annoyed from one of the people i watch on youtube. he did a serious video clips of his day, and in one of them he and his family stopped for lunch, and one of his daughters couldnt go in, why i dont know. but this guy had the audacity to turn on the camera and say they were at the restauarant and then turn the camera on his wailing/crying daughter and say " and she's crying because she cant go in" in a mockingly "i feel pity for her" tone ( from what i gathered). This astounds me, no dad should film his daughter against her wiil, let alone make fun of her crying daughter because she cant go into a restaurant. You shoudl go someplace and get drive-thru where she can eat. IT's not that hard. And seriously dodnt film your own offspring crying in a video you let masses see, thats disturbing!

Yea i fell like i dont make my point clearly in those mini-rants.

anyway, to end on somehting more positive. below is a link to remix/mashup i've had stuck in my head since i ripped it from youtube. It's by DJ Earworm and its a mashup of the top 25 billboard hits from 2009. Its pretty good, and apparently he does it every year. idk if the 2010 one is out yet. here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNzrwh2Z2hQ

That is all.

--Zack

On a more positive n