mpanta’s blog

Yesterday I was up almost all night writing five papers for my english class.  I fell asleep very late.  But when I woke up this morning, I realized that these papers were not do today, they were do whenever our conferences were.  I felt a little mad because my friends had gone to the Nexus party and I really wanted to go to the party also.  

            On the bright side, I was not as mad later this morning because I realized that I did not have to do much over the weekend.  I had gotten most of my work done and I am happy for that.  This weekend is mother’s day and I plan to spend it with my mom at home.  I do not know what I am going to get her yet because I have no money but I am sure I will figure it out.  

I have a friend that wrote an article about the past weekend. My friend who is Muslim spoke about the police being with dogs and how she felt threatened. Today in the morning, she came to my room crying. I asked what was wrong and she told me that she had gotten hate e-mails about her articles. One e-mail said that she should not be writting about these things because she is an immigrant and she needed to leave. She wears a scarf around her head because of her religion and one e-mail had said that she had wrapped that scarf way too tightly because what she wrote was against white people and she should not be against them becuase they were the ones who are helping her.
Another e-mail said that she could take her scarf off now because we were in America and she should not be hiding anymore. What do you respond to stupid comments like that. Just because she is Muslim and wears a scarf around her hair, everyone thinks she is someone bad. One of the e-mails that was the worst was were they told her that she should watch her back and tell the terrorists to leave the americans alone.
Just because she wrote something about the weekend, and she wrote about something that WAS wrong. She mentioned that there were police officers holding K-9’s and that at Orchard Hill there were no police officers. Because of this, she is thinking about leaving. Someone could just come up to her and beat her up for writting something that was trully unfair to her and many others. This is all very unfair I think. People should realize that race is an insult to some people and racism is still playing a role in today’s world. I just hope that people are more open minded and let people have the right to write what ever they want. Everyone should be able to express any feelings, and if most people can, why can’t my friend who has a scarf around her head have the right to express what she is feeling also?

This weekend was the most wonderful weekend I have had. On Friday, my boyfriend was going to come and spend time with me. He called me around 7:30pm and he told me that he was going to be here around 15 minutes, about 30 minutes passed, and he did not call me. After a while, I started to panic because I was calling him and he was not picking up the phone. I was extremely surprised because he always picks up the phone. An hour and a half went by and he was not calling me back. I called the police about 4 times asking them if there had been any accidents reported. They always gave me a no answer. I started to panick and cry. A little while after, he called me and told me that he was with a police officer that had stopped him for almost two hours. I was releaved that he had called me but then he told me he had to go because the police officer was still with him.
When he got here with a cab, I asked him where his car was, and he told me that the police officer had taken his licence away and towed his car and all because he had a border around his licence plate! When he told me that, I didnt believe him because that is completely stupid. I asked him why in the world the police officer was with him for an hour and a half, and it was because he was checking if my boyfriend had alcohol or drugs. He was inspecting his car, and the police officer asked him about his computer. The police officer asked where he had gotten that! Does a Hispanic male have no right to posses his own computer? Because his licence plate was “covered” with the border that every stupid car has, he got his licence taken away. I could not believe it, it was so unrealistic to me. After, I called his friend that was with him and he told me that what he had told me was true.
The day after, we had to go and walk for about 4 hours trying to look for his car. Thank God that someone was there, and we asked them to give us a ride, we drove for about 20 minutes and we finally got there. When we got there, we had to pay and came back. After all this trouble, my boyfriend and I decided to attend the Black out BBQ in South West. We went to South West to find police officers with K-9 dogs just standing there watching the people. I asked my boyfriend, is that really necessary? Why do they have to come to a cook out where there are mostly blacks with dogs? After I got really curious that we went to Orchard Hill and let me mention that there were no police officers in sight. A beer bottle was thrown at a window, and no police officers were there to see that. It is amazing to me how much racism I saw this weekend in UMass, I thought that this college was “DIVERSE” but I guess myself and others thought wrong.

Today in the morning I woke up about six o’clock in the morning and went out for a run. I was really dreading going to my classes throughout the day, all I wanted it to be was the weekend, but then I remembered that my first class was going to be the best one of the day. My teacher was going to bring coffee and doughnuts. Not only was he going to bring something to eat, but also our class was going to watch FAMILY GUY!
Family Guy was first introduced to my by my nine year old brother. At night, I stay up with him when I go back home and we watched the show. At first I thought that it was inappropriate for a kid his age because of all the things the creators include in that show, but then I realized that they made fun of everyday things.
Family Guy is now my personal favorite TV show now. I like that the creators make fun of people just for fun, and they also make fun of political things. I don’t think I can relate to this show in any way, but it is funny to see how messed up this family is. I loved the fact that these shows spoke about the University of Massachusetts. It was funny how they related it to the show… a drunken guy from this school jumps out of his room and is now in a comma.
What I do not like about this show is that they degrade the woman named Louis. She is the wife, and also the mother in this show. Just to look at the baby of the show say that he hates her and that he is going to kill her, is just disturbing to me. Of course it is funny, but the husband treats their dog better than he treats his wife and that is disrespectful to women.
The audience of this show might be kids, and adults. The people who would not appreciate this would be feminists, and husbands who actually care for their wives. People who would appreciate the show would be wife beaters, no, just kidding. People that might appreciate this show might be people who are really laid back and find things like this funny. Mostly college students would appreciate this TV show because of how stupid it is, this show is a real stress reliever.
I would sell this program to adults who like stupid comedy, and definitely to college students. I definitely would not sell this show to kids under 13 just because it is really violent, and it has harsh humor.
I loved watching this show in class. It is funny to see a mom get drunk and take over her daughter’s spring vacation because this would not happen in real life. It is scary to hear a little baby say that he hates his mom, and that he is really going to kill her, but at the same time funny because again, it is not going to happen. Finally, having a baby try to stop his parents from having sex is hilarious because this baby talks and is a genius.
Over all, I enjoy this show for personal relaxation, I would not see if with my mom or dad because they would feel as if this show is not appropriate for any one to see, but this show is great, and like I said, stupid and a great stress reliever.

Today was a very interesting class. We had a famous bloger named Tommy Divine come in to talk to us about what a blog was to him, and what he did with his blogs. I thought it was interesting how he told us to “go on-line and start cashing checks”(Divine). I loved this phrase. Tommy was very enthusiastic in his blogs and he really seemed to be having fun doing what he was doing with his life.
I think that if I had the opportunity to be doing the kind of work that he was doing, I would be doing it too. He seems very free spirited and very relaxed. His work does not seem to involve stress, on the contrary, he says that he is basically his own boss and he writes about what is pleasing to him. If other people are interested in his writing then he gets paid. The most interesting thing about his business is that he does not waste money. He knows exactly how much he is making by the amount of people that are viewing his website. This way, he can make a profit and not be worried about wasting money towards people that are not viewing his website.
I loved the fact that he can live with this job and still afford to eat macaroni and cheese every day, to me it wouldn’t see that a person could make this much money doing this work. I was definitely wrong. Tommy is very comical by saying that when he gets tired of eating macaroni and cheese, he is able to choose some other job here in the University of Massachusetts campus to do little jobs that get him money for only several months. No wonder he does not get bored! He is free to do what he pleases and he also takes risks which is the most important part. I think that taking risks is what makes life so much fun and at the same time interesting. When I first read Tommy’s posts, I thought he was a senior at UMass but he graduated during the 1970’s. Tommy is such a young person and full of life because he loves what he does, and hopefully I will do the same in the future, he is a true life inspirer!!!!

Today’s activity was to come to observe everything that you have not noticed before. when I come to class every morning, I know that there are pictureson the walls coming up the stairs. I never really noticed what exactly they really were because I am always talking on the phone. The first picture is of blue women, as I go up more stairs, there is another picture of what looks to be a Chinese town, with cracked walls and weird looking shapes. I found this interesting because when I came up the stairs I did not really appreciate what was in front of me.
Outside of Bartlett, I listen to the birds, I have not heard them before. Today I am noticing that I take many things for granted simple things like listening to the birds sing. The building has a rock yard that I have seen before but I never walked through it. Standing here makes me remember my middle school days. I remember reading the book Hatchet. The birds, the bushes, and rocks just makes me imagine reading the book because when I was reading it, this is what I would imagine.
Today I also noticed how rude and cranky people are when they get to class late. Usually when I am getting to class, people open the door for me, but now, people just seem to be running to wherever they are going and just shutting the door on my face. I guess I can understand this if they are late, but I did not realize it before. I do not want to go anywhere else because being outside, listening and appreciating the birds singing is amazing, but it is starting to rain, and my paper is getting wet.
Going inside the Bartlett building, I notice how tired people seem to be. It almost seems like they hate being were they are. The people in our class also seem to be this way. One thing that bothers me right now is that outside is raining and it is cold, but people seem to not mind. They are wearing flip-flops, skirts, and t-shirts. How crazy is that?
I just noticed that there has been this man vacuuming this whole time and it is getting a little annoying because people keep getting it dirty and he is still vacuuming. He actually just bent down and I did not expect to see what I saw, a hairy butt crack. This is grossing me out right now so I am going to move.
Walking away I am watching this Asian girl stare sadly at the soda machine. I wonder why she looks so sad. It reminds me about when I am sad. I am usually sad when I think about my family, especially my little brother who whenever I leave, asks me how soon I am going to come back home. I wish that I didn’t have to leave home and be with him the whole time, but this is the way it has to be. I also see a person talking in the phone with watery eyes. I hope she was just yawning and not crying. This also reminds me about when I talk to my brother on the phone, and I start to cry because I miss him so much. Wow, I just realized how much I miss my family and I just saw them yesterday. I loved today’s class, I learned so much and I learned to appreciate the little things in life. Sometimes people need to be reminded how much the world and family means to them. I hope I can get a chance to do this again because it was an insightful day.

I have read Tommy Devine’s enteries and some of them are really awkward and I do not particularly enjoy reading these kinds of entries. The GayPril Queerfest was, in my opinion very nice and informative until I saw the video at the end of his post. I thought it was a little disrespectful for the gay community, but then again, maybe it is just I.
I think that these posts are more like fun to Tommy Divine. Maybe informative, but more fun than anything. I know that I would probably keep the posts that he wrote if these were mine because I think that they are well written and involve random subjects which I think is interesting.
Not keeping the videos included in the posts would be my way to go. Some of the videos are really disrespectful to me and sometimes useless. I think that his pictures and videos are used in his blog sometimes to support what he is talking about, but sometimes his pictures and videos are just there to be there. Maybe they are there to relate to what he is writing about but I feel that at times they are just there.

Blogging is extremely weird to me right now. I have been using blogs for biology class. Our class has to read some posts about biology stories and we have to go and post what we thought about their postings. Never did I think I was going to be posting a blog for other people to read. I have to get used to it because I usually do not like people reading what I write.
Getting used to it will take a little time but in the long run I think that I am going to get used to it, and eventually like it better.

So many ideas for our Monday English class! I have no idea what to do. I love all the ideas. Listening to music while meditating might seem like a great idea, but messing around with a teacher’s class seems so much better than anything. I think that it would be extremely interesting to see the teacher’s reaction. I would also see if we as a class could pull it off, and not get in trouble.
Another great idea that came up is freeze tag in the library. Playing freeze tag but maybe not in the library. I think that I would feel mad if people were making a lot of noise while I was trying to study. I know that there is some noise in the library, but you can mostly block it out. I know that if people were playing any kind of game there, I would feel mad and insulted. That is why I do not think it is such a good idea to do it in the library.
The best thing for me to do is probably listen to music and meditate because that way, I can fall asleep and relax a little bit. Even though we might be doing so many things, I think that over all this Monday’s class will be fun and interesting at the same time and I will be writing about it in my journal before going to bed at night.

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