behind enemy lines

i've personally never had any interest in being in the army or any of the other armed forces, in fact, i've never even seen a real gun in person, let alone held one.  however, i've always had the utmost respect for the individuals that choose to do so.  i've always wondered what life would be like if you were a trained to be combat soldier.  while us civilians are waking up and brushing our teeth and getting ready for a day of school or work sitting at a desk, these soldiers are brushing their teeth and getting ready for a day of learning how to fight and kill the enemy out on the battlefield.  of course because i have no experience with anything even remotely related to the armed forces, the only thing to guide my thinking and imagination of what a day in the life of a soldier would be like are the countless war and fighting movies i've seen.  i'm sure like most other movies, the roles are somewhat exaggerated or altered in some way to add entertainment value, but i've always wondered just how much is changed or if it is at all.
sometimes i try to imagine the mindset of a soldier.  they basically wake up knowing that they might have to kill someone that very day.  i'm almost positive that with whatever career path i choose i will never wake up with that thought rattling through my brain, which can probably be said for the majority of other civilians.  but here they are, training, day after day, after day in case they have to do just that.  sometimes sleeping in a foreign country, virtually in the middle of nowhere, not always knowing where the enemy is.  talk about a job for the mentally tough.  i know i couldn't do it.  kudos to them.

welcome to the future

do you ever think about what you thought your life was going to be like when you were a little kid?  i remember being in third or fourth grade thinking about what i wanted to be when i grew up, something that most children do.  i wanted to be a nurse because i thought that men were doctors and women were nurses, both being equivalent.  then once i hit fifth or sixth grade, all anyone could talk about was high school, turning sixteen, and getting your dream car.  i remember thinking that i wanted a lime green volkswagen beetle, and i always pictured myself driving around and blaring "i'm real" by j. lo and ja rule over and over everywhere i went.  at this time, i was playing four sports and of course i saw myself playing each sport in college and then naturally making it to the respective professional leagues upon completion of college.  then, once i finally got to high school, i started thinking more realistically.  i picked out a 1995 bmw for my first car, but it turned out to be a death trap so we sold that and i got a volkswagen jetta, in the same family as my original dream car.  i also started thinking more seriously about my future career and took up and interest in chemistry and wanted to be a pharmacist, that is until i took ap chemistry my senior year and found out that chemistry become a tad bit tougher than i was used to in the introductory course i had taken my sophomore year.  right about the same time that i realized chemistry wasn't for me it was time to start filling out college applications.  then i really started thinking about my career and what i wanted to do with the rest of my life.  i got one thing right when i was dreaming about my future back in middle school; i'm playing volleyball in college, but i'm more realistic about my hopes of going to play professionally because it is not a very reliable career path.  instead i decided that business was the route for me, accounting in particular but i was still curious about other things that i could possibly take and that's how i came to my double major with advertising.  i just think it is really interesting how some of your childhood dreams stay with you throughout life, although they made be altered just a little bit, and some you quickly outgrow. it'll be even more interesting to see which dreams continue into the next phase of my life.

heebie jeebies

i think most of us are familiar with the tv show monk.  i caught a rerun the other day and i had somehow forgotten just how many things he was afraid of.  every episode he had to solve the cases while somehow dealing with his seemingly infinite amount of irrational fears and phobias.  phobias are an interesting subject to me.  obviously they are caused by situations that could possibly cause you harm, but i don't understand why some people are afraid of some things and others aren't.  thinking about my fears, i am afraid of heights, spiders, open water, falling down stairs, small spaces, being in my house or apartment by myself, most large animals, people in masks, rodents, getting stuck in an elevator...i could probably go on for days, so i'll just stop there.  but my roommate has no problem with heights, open water, stairs, small spaces, being alone in the apartment, people in masks; in fact, she probably doesn't even have half of the same fears i do, but she definitely has fears of her own, some of which i might not have.  also, unlike my sister, who is an ever bigger scaredy-cat than i am, i am not afraid of ants and lady bugs, trust me, i know she's ridiculous.  what i don't understand is when you are dealing with things that can cause you harm, why isn't everyone afraid of it? why aren't we all afraid of the same things when we all have the same chance of being harmed?

"my trampy little sister says myspace is the new booty call"

of course you are welcome to watch the whole trailer, but the section i want to point out in particular begins at 2:10.  drew barrymore's character says "i had this guy leave me a voicemail at work, so i called him at home, and then he emailed me to my blackberry, and so i texted to his cell.  and now you just have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies. it's exhausting!"  when i think about all of the technology out there in the world today i could not think of a better way to describe than what drew barrymore said in this movie.  many people say the world is becoming "flat" because everything is so interconnected through technology that you can almost instantaneously communicate with basically anywhere in the world at any moment.  i was talking to my sister one time and we were talking about all of the different ways that we had to get in touch with one another.  we had phone calls, text messages, the heytell walkie talkie application on the iphone, the kik messenger application on the iphone, facetime on the iphone, skype, ichat, google video, 2 different email address apiece, facebook wall post, message, or chat, myspace, xanga, aol instant messanger, and google instant messanger.  and i'm sure we could probably continue to add more to that list.  all those different channels for two people to communicate.  the world really is becoming "flat," so to speak.
this really got me thinking.  i realize for the convenience factor that all of this technology is a good thing, but what about for the other aspects of our lives. with all this technology to hide behind, we don't really ever have to interact with people face-to-face if we don't want to.  sure you can pretty much personalize the output on all of the aforementioned channels of communication but nothing can compare to level of interaction you receive in a face-to-face situation.  with all this technology we don't even have to be ourselves or let people get to know the real us.  i realize that sometimes it is easier to communicate through all of these different channels in the short run, but isn't it hurting our face-to-face social skills in the long run? pretty soon people aren't going to know how to hold a conversation with someone in the same room without text messaging them.

the backroads of my mind map

in my introduction to creativity class, we were assigned our first creative project near the beginning of the semester.  the assignment was to create a mind map around the topic of our choice.  we had to choose a main topic, my was secrets, and then create at least three main branches from the main topic, mine were secret fears, secret handshakes, and secret stashes.  then from each of the main branches we were supposed to create smaller branches and then even smaller branches until we ran out of room on the paper.  we were instructed to look for connections all across the mind map, regardless of which main branch the sub branch, or idea, was rooted on.  at the time in class we were learning about brainstorming and divergent thinking and this assignment promoted the use both ideas.
the process not only made realize how many connections i could make, which amazed me,  but it also revealed something deeper about the way i think.  i didn't really notice it until i came across the project again the other day and i was looking at the grading rubric and seeing where i lost points.  one of the major areas that i lost points was because i sectioned off each of the main branches and that would have been fine but i didn't make any connection from section to section after that.  my professor even thought that i sectioned it off as to not permit connections from section to section.  at first, i didn't really notice anything weird about the way i sectioned the mind map off or find it weird that there were no cross section connections.  then it hit. i had most likely done it subconsciously.  in almost every aspect of my life, i like a little bit of structure but then within that structure i find it necessary to have freedom.  hence my double major in rigid, rule-based accounting and free-flowing, divergent advertising.  i need a little bit of both to stay sane.  thus it only makes sense that i would continue this on my mind map.  each section of main branches were organized neatly but within those sections ideas flowed any and everywhere.  i never thought a class assignment would teach me so much about myself.

me jane. you jack. give jane ball.

have you ever stopped and thought about sports.  i mean like really think about them.  what was the first sport? who started it? who made up the rules? why do we even need sports? what purpose do they serve? why are they even fun? how do we find so much joy in playing sports? why are they fun to watch? if you really think about the answers to these questions sports in general begin to not really make sense.  i am and have been an athlete for the a large majority of my life but i still don't think i could answer half of these questions and make any sense.
someone once said to me that volleyball looked like "organized hot potato," and when you think about it, it really does.  individually, you can't touch the ball too long or you will be called for a lift and the other team will get the point, but at the same time you want to control the ball and pass it to your teammates so you can hit it to the other side of the net only so the other team can do the same thing right back.  football is yet another childhood game altered to make it acceptable for adults to play.  that game is keep away and a much more violent version of tag rolled into one, where the endzones are home base.  i'm sure i could go on and on and oversimplify every sport out there and relate it back to some childhood, but for time's sake i'll just leave it at those two.  with that in mind though, if you think about the sports that involve a ball, we are all basically barbarians chasing something that is usually bright with a funny shape.  we might as well be screaming "me want ball," just to tie it back to the days of neanderthals.  but yet some people's whole lives and careers are based around these seemingly pointless activities and there is still so much joy involved.  like i said, i am one of these ball-chasing, children-wannabes and i still can't explain why.

till infidelity or boredom do us part..

this day in age it seems like every time i turn on the tv or radio i hear about another celebrity couple that is breaking up or getting a divorce.  whether it's courtney cox-arquette and david arquette or eva longoria parker and tony parker.  couples that seemed like they were going to last suddenly split.  it's almost like the thing to do in hollywood is get married to someone you co-starred with, i won't even go into the psychological background supporting this trend, and then a few years, or months even, down the road file for a divorce.  i've noticed with celebrities and people in the spotlight infidelity and boredom, aka irreconcilable differences, tend to be the two biggest reasons for divorce.  i understand growing apart, i mean it could happen to anyone and it is really no one's fault, but this recent string of celebrities cheating on each other has me thrown for a loop.  sandra bullock and jesse james. the aforementioned eva longoria-parker and tony parker. jennifer anniston and brad pitt.  i think i can speak for most people when i say that i absolutely never saw it coming.



i realize that divorce happens in normal people's lives everyday, for the same reasons it happens to celebrities, since they are also people afterall.  my concern lies with the image of marriage and love that is being created by celebrities since basically every aspect of their lives are under the spotlight.  how can we be expected not to imitate these same tendencies and even pass them on to our children.  i think brad paisley said best in his song celebrity (video featured above) when he said "i can fall in and out of love/ have marriages that barely last a month/ when they go down the drain/ i'll blame it on the fame/ and the pressures that go with/ and say it's just so tough/ being a celebrity."  it's almost like celebrities really do use their fame as an excuse, as if it affects their ability to stay faithful or actually look for true love.  i just wonder if these celebrities ever stop and think for one second about the big picture and how they are affecting how society views marriage and love.