Week 5-Why the music industry hates guitar hero page 268

   While reading through a few articles in our Argument English textbook. One very relevant article to teens today caught my eye. It is the growing popularity of the game Guitar Hero. Now the argument in this one is that artists are getting upset, while also companies like Itunes, over the fact that the game is minimally paying for rights to use the songs and taking away traffic to the sites. To me this is somewhat of a poor decision to the music companies. Instead of whining over the fact that they are becoming more popular, they should be working with the game in ways to benefit them both. Instead of fighting for more money, why not fight to incorporate both? As stated in the article Aerosmith has even come out with a version of Guitar hero and made more money off of it than any album they have ever come out with. Companies need to realize the change in fads over the decades. In the early 2000's yes CD's would be selling like crazy, but now a day's it is all video games for teens and young adults. In the name of Guitar Hero I completely agree with the way it is going. Personally, the music companies are acting pretty childish. I am more than positive they are making enough money to continue to grow. If companies would stop being so greedy and trying to conquer all other industries and be on top, they could work on ways to relate to all the age groups of our society today.

Free Choice #2 Citizenship

When reading through a few yahoo new articles at work one specifically caught my eye. It was a loophole in the citizenship to the United States. To me that sounded crazy so I had to check it out. Basically in short what the Chinese are doing is visiting an island that is only located about 4 hours from China, by plane, called Saipan. Which is by the way a U.S. territory (never knew that even existed or we had territories out that far). People are actually selling packages for $27,000 to people to have their baby on this island and get complete U.S. citizenship. This kind of opens my mind it two ways, one being we have a great country that many people very desperately want to live in and two being that I do feel sorry for anyone that has to go to this great investment for their child to become a citizen and later on get themselves granted because of it.

It does make me feel better inside knowing when I am a parent I will not have to travel long lengths in an airplane and have my child on an island somewhere just to get a pass to a certain country. It lets you appreciate what you actually have, but not totally realize it at the time. Also, my thoughts on this are I do not believe that this should be right for these people to just be granted visa's that easy. It really does make it a great deal un-fair for the people not so fortunate from China that have applied the correct way and still have not gotten accepted. Personally, I would be upset. Just thought this was an interesting article that brought up different points of view. The URL is below.


http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/beyond-the-headline-abc-news/loophole-american-citizenship-chinese-161546338.html?vp=1

Text Response 1

   While flipping through my textbook one day look for inspiration on something to write about I came across and interesting article in Chapter 14 named "Turning Goy's into Girls". Immediately this brings to your attention, what the heck is a goy? Michelle Cottle does an excellent job of putting the ever so changing trends of the 21st century in plain view. Michelle writes, "The more men obsess about growing old or unattractive, the more marketers will exploit and expand that fear; the more marketers bombard men with messages about the need to be beautiful, the more they will obsess". This small section sums everything up, but I am still not convinced completely. Yes, I have caught myself being easily convinced with fancy infomercials that only show one side of the story. But couldn't all these magazines and ploys be a good thing for someone? As being a citizen of the U.S. we have the ability to think freely and make our own decisions, whether it be to go out and buy something to make you feel better about yourself. I think it really gives someone the hope they need to make better lifestyle choices and continue to better themselves. It really provides a way for people set goals for what they want and to achieve them.

   Although that is my side on this there are other points too. magazines and articles often do exploit people and cause them to get a little out of hand. Buying or changing one thing in your diet or appearance is not something to be concerned about, but when people look into it too much and take it a little out of hand is when there is a problem. Although they do sometimes provide somewhat of a way to trick people I think that some of the responsibility can be put on the readers for not looking into something before acting upon it.

Alpha Dog -1/29/14

   While enjoying our two days off from school I ran into somewhat of a popular movie I had never seen known as Alpha Dog. Immediately while studying in my room it caught my attention and made it quite hard to do anything else. Nick Cassevetes definitely made a A movie for anyone to watch incorporating the true story of Jesse James Hollywood, a 19 year old drug dealer who kidnaps a 15 year old boy whose brother owes him drug money (IMDb). The boy was eventually murdered by him. What really got me interested in the movie was the fact that it does keep you on the edge of your seat the entire time by just how outrageous all the characters were. Anytime they did something you just think to yourself, how could someone be so dumb and actually do that? By the end it leaves you thinking, does any of them actually feel remorse and stupidity for what happened? Such a simple thing was taken so far out of hand its hard to believe it would happen over $1200. All-in-all, the movie follows the true story very spot on, if you research and put about 15 minutes into it. Towards the end it gives a re-enactment of an interview of the mother's reaction to the whole thing. It really puts you in her shoes and makes you really think, what if that were to happen to me? While also, leaving you sad and wondering how anything like that could happen and how real it all really was. This is for sure anyone looking for a great movie that covers real-life cases. Below is a YouTube video that gives a brief summary of it all.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9f1_PJWA9iM