iMedia: Beirut "Nantes"

La Blogotheque is a really cool site that films take-away-shows on the streets of cities of some of the best bands. Below is an example of one of these shows. The song is "Nates" by Beirut-

Personally, I believe bands like this create a beautiful sound with the various instruments seen in the video. It shows that each person has musical talent. They challenge the status quo of todays music because much of the popular music today is altered by electronics in a studio whereas bands like Beirut, Edward Sharpe and The Magnetic Zeros, The Morning Benders, Noah And The Whale, etc. are able to create a great organic sound.

I think it is important, that in order to keep music alive, we need to apprecaite the talent that is needed to create a song like this. Not only are the lyrics beautiful, but also each and ever musician has an incredible amount of knowlege in their field rather than having a voice that is altered by auto-tuning and such.

An Inconvenient Truth: The American Plutocracy

Last night, I watched the Michael Moore documentary, "Capitalism: A Love Story." This film really opened my eyes to the problems of our government and on Wall Street. At one point in the movie, our government is referred to as a "Plutocracy."  I looked up the definition because before watching the movie, I had never even heard the word. According to dictionary.com a plutocracy is:

"1. The rule or power of wealth or of the wealthy
2. A government or state in which the wealthy class rules.
3. A class or group ruling, or exercising power of influence by virtue of its wealth."

In the documentary, plutocracy is brought up when the bank, Citigroup's, international memo is leaked and they discuss how this method of governing is taking over and soon everyone else will not matter, as seen in the link below.

Citigroup International Memo

I know to really have an opinion on this I need to be more informed but I feel that a plutocracy cannot be a good way to form a government. What really bothers means that we are represented by a class that only takes up about 1% of our population. And this class is known for it's selfishness and greed. The rich will keep getting richer and the poor getting poorer. This is not an okay way to run the whole country.

The only way for me to comes to terms with this problem is by having the people revolt or have a revolution. The people need to know that this is not fair. I hope to continue to do more research on what is truly going on in this country.

Around Blogging

In the first blog I responded to Sammy B. discussed Sarah's Ted video topic of dissecting you fears. She did this in such a great way that people could really connect with her expirience. The next post I commented on, Duncan Q. writes about how thoughts and imagined expiriences can be just as emotional and stimulating as real life expiriences. Here are my comments to both:

"Sammy,
Remember when we were friends in the same second grade class with Mr. B? I like thinking about that.

But anyways, i know EXACTLY what you mean about a critical family. I can't watch T.V. with my mom anymore becuase of her comments...ugh..i dont even want to think about it.

This blog makes me so proud of you! I have heard that you are an amazing singer!! So dont be afraid please! Also, sing for me one day.

I'm in the same boat as you too. I am in choir, so in that sense, i have preformed in front of people, but Jamnesty was my first real preformance in front of people by myself and it was probably the best i've ever felt. I hope you felt the same way after conquering your fear at hip hop coffee house! dfjksfgd I'm really excited for you even if you dont preform in the future (but i hope you do).

Thanks for sharing Sammy, I enjoyed this."



"Yoyoyooo Dunk,
This is cool. I like this post. In issues today we even talked about how a great portion of our time is spent in other "worlds" in our mind and how our minds and bodies may not even know eachother very well because of how much time they spend apart. I dont know if i explained that well, but i hope you get it the gist (jist?).

There have been many times where imagining an expience has been more influencial in my life than "real" expiriences. I used to imagine scenerios of hanging out with people who are off in college where it was vertually impossible for me to communicate with them. By imagining expiriences, I would feel just as happy as if i had actually been with them.

I think this is a really cool idea. You should write a book on it."

Best of The Week: Life Before The Internet

One of the Do You Mind questions from this week asked us what we remembered about our lives before the internet. What I really enjoyed about this question was that instead of my mind traveling to the crazy, scary, super technological advanced future, it made me remember a calmer, happier time of my life.

I have this problem where I either block out or don't take time to remember my past. It's bad and I know I shouldn't block things out but it's become a habit. So anyways, this question brought me back to my very first house, living with just my dad, eating mac n' cheese in our living room, watching Happy Days. It's weird how many different emotions just this one question gives me.

In class I talked about Kid Pix, a computer game from my childhood, here's a little preview-

So what? Maybe it a little weird. But it was literally my life.

But even though all I talked about was Kid Pix, this question has made me remember some great times that I took for granted. Not only have I realized how important it is to appreciate the people around you and even the interests you have, but also, to remember the past.