The War Essay

In the movie "The War" a war veteran named Stephen is suffering because he can't obtain a job dude to his post traumatic stress causing him to spend time in a mental institution. He wants to prevent all violence, in and around his life because all violence has done for Stephen is caused him pain and long term suffering. For example, when Stephen left a fellow injured soldier on the battlefield, while he and the rest of his unit flew away in a helicopter. Trauma is later shown in the film effecting his son Stu. After this incident all he felt was pain, regret, and was also very traumatized. Violence is a recurring theme throughout the movie because a lot of the violence in this film was caused by anger which resulted in bullying and in turn backlash and anger and so on and so forth. Violence continues to plague the world, but it can be stopped and this film proves this statement through several events and examples.

One example of violence caused in this film starts with Mr. Lipnicki. Mr. Lipnicki abuses his kids and don't show them love. As a result of this Mr. Lipnicki's kids take out all their anger on the Mr. Simmon's kids. The Lipnicki kids are not bad kids, they are just troubled. Mr. Simmons sees this, so he decides to take part in a small act of kindness and gives cotton candy to a couple of the Lipnicki kids because "They look like they haven't been given anything in quite some time". Towards the end of the movie when the Simmons kids save Billy Lipnicki's life their was a beam of light shining in on them, symbolizing hope.

Stu Simmons suffers from post traumatic stress after his dad dies and they show this by Stu trying to distract himself by working hard on building his fort. Later in the movie he is more traumatized during the scene where there is an all out war at the fort. In the movie from Stu's point of view everything slows down, he observes the battle taking place, and he starts to hear helicopter propellors at full speed. This is the same sound Stu's father heard while taking off in a helicopter when he leaving a fellow soldier on the field. At which point they were both traumatized. Standing up for others is also a large theme in this film as well. An example of this is when Lidia Simmons stands up for Elvadine.

One can see how violence can really impact someones life. This movie through it's memoirs reveals this notion and goes into depth with it. We learn that violence doesn't solve anything and it can change people.

College Essay and LL Cool J's Developing Career

Last week in the class American Literature and Composition I created my first draft of my college essay. Since I'm going to a community college instead of a traditional four year college I created my essay by the standards of commonapp.org. I wrote about my passion for music and how I love to collect and share it. To my surprise my teacher, Ms. Mano (hopefully didn't butcher your name) said it was actually pretty good. Later on that week, we teamed up with a friend so that we could leave comments on each others essays. The comments were very helpful in expanding and revising my paper. I'm thinking about adding my experiences from camp and how music has effected everything else I do in life. I'm also thinking about revising my language with more "hey look I read" type language.

Last week I also read more of my book, where the main character LL Cool J talked about his developing career. This chapter was more basic compared to the last couple chapters I read. There were no surprises except for a brawl he got into, where it was him and his dad against a pro fighter. Cool James mainly talked about how his dad stated to manage his career and his view on drug culture. He believed that drugs just cause pain in the long run, whether you use them and or sell them. He keeps himself distanced from drugs, so today you won't see one alcoholic beverage in his house.

Applications and LL Cool J's Teen Years

This week we focused on filling out our college applications. After high school I'm going to community college for a year or two so that I can receive several credits needed to get a bachelors degree without having to pay ridiculous costs for these classes at a non-community college. After I get these credits for my bachelors, and even during, I will be trying to learn as much as I can about audio production, sound design, digital art and design, and marketing. So this week I created an account for the common application and started to fill out a common application form. This form is accepted by several community colleges, but it's really in depth information and it's a pain to fill out. I also found an application form for Front Range Community College that I will be filling out very soon.

I also got through the second part of my book, LL Cool J's "I Make My Own Rules". Through these chapters he talked about his teenage years. I found out he had the same dream I have right now, which is to hear my own song on the radio. I want to get known and make a living doing something I love and Cool James felt the same. In this chapter we also see the struggle it took James to get his first gig, he had to beg his only connection to get this gig until his connection finally broke down and said he could perform during his dj set. This is why I'm going to get involved in a program after college called Recording Connection that teaches you everything you need to know about producing and recording music while making several connections with people in the business.

Appreciating the little things.

In the fourth grade, I went to a picnic with one of my friends. We played with air-soft guns and after had a wonderful time drinking cool beverages in the sun. I stopped and thought to myself how much better it was to just relax in the sun, than it was to be at home just watching television. I enjoyed just watching some of the adults conversing with each other and laughing. I appreciated how well the park was kept up and how beautiful the flowers were that day. I appreciated how beautiful life was at that very moment, and was at peace as a human being; Then the day got even better. It turned out there was two boxes of pizza that weren't eaten. I ask a near by adult what was wrong with them, and they say that the pizza had gotten cold and not many people were interested. At this point in my life I was disgusted by pizza and really didn't have a taste for it. I didn't like going to birthday parties because that's all that they would have to eat, and they would usually have to order me something special. That day, I decided to take a chance. A lot of the other food had been eaten at the picnic and I was starving. I never had cold pizza before so I pulled off a piece of the pie and took a bite. To this day, I can say that that was the best darn bite of cold pizza to date. Today, any time is a good time for pizza. :)

Memoirs Ahoy!

This week in senior literature and composition we explored the world of memoirs. Dictionary.com describes a memoir as a historical account or biography written from personal knowledge or special sources. We were assigned to read a memoir of our choice by the end of september. When this was first launched on us earlier this week, I immediately knew I wanted to read a memoir about a musical artist I followed. I thought it would be interesting to see how artists like Biggie Smalls or Childish Gambino grew up. I asked one of the librarians if they had any memoirs that fit my interest but all they could come up with was a book LL Cool J wrote about his life called "I Make My Own Rules". I didn't know much about LL Cool J besides him being an old school rapper, having a very recognizable name, and that he is a well known actor. So I wasn't very interested in reading a book he wrote about his life. But after reading a couple sentences, I thought it would be a "hoot" to read.

Later that week I finished the first part of the book, but it wasn't exactly how I thought the book was going to read. The first couple sentences makes the book seem like it's going to be about how to get girls and become famous, but then as I read further into the book, I really got to know what Cool James life was like as a kid and it wasn't pretty. It turns out his mother along with his grandfather got shot by his own father as James watched. This was not the end of the messed up stories of his childhood though. As I read on in his book his mom started recovering from the bullet wounds even though her doctor said she would never walk again. Her body therapist believed that she could and she eventually did, later her body therapist became her boyfriend. They were together over a large span of years but the messed up thing was that during this time, this body therapist was constantly beating James.