GP Post # 4

Video: Worries Over Circle Contacts Trend
Editor: Unknown
Link

There are so many things to be said about this video. First it worries me that I cannot find and author or an editor anywhere because then I may not have the chance to use it in my GP. Second, this will be the only time Lady Gaga shows up in my blog posts, I promise. Third, "Japanese Cartoons?!" Whatever, call them what you like, I know what they are, you know what they are, and it all started with graphic novels.

On to the real important stuff. This video covers the latest trend in young girls [I had never heard of this until today, some trend]. They are essentially color contacts, which existed before this huge trend, where the iris is larger than a normal color contact. Okay, sounds harmless, right? Well the FDA has not approved them in the United States, I take that to mean that businesses cannot make these products but people can go and buy them from other countries to have them shipped to the USA. Loop hole? I think so.

I was a little bothered when the reporter said that Lady Gaga was inspired by manga. Sure, I saw that music video, I like the song, and I did look at her eyes and say "Hm, that's a little freakish; so what, it's Lady Gaga." Honestly I didn't think anything of it, I wasn't determined to make my eyes look huge and freakish like many characters in mangas that I have read. The reporter also clearly says that her eyes were bigger due to changes made with a computer. She wasn't wearing contacts! So this makes me think that the news company used Lady Gaga to draw attention to this topic because the story would be exactly the same without her; people would be less interested in it and think "Oh, it's just a bunch of nerds with weird contacts."

Being a contact wearer myself I saw this and just thought how funny it was that people who do not need contacts or glasses were putting these contacts in and losing their eyesight because of an infection. Ha! When I was younger I never let anyone wear my glasses because when you wear someone's glasses that are not your own your eyes may adjust and later need those glasses for yourself.

I also found it amusing that people want these things so they can look like fictional characters. It brought me back to the day when I was reading Kare First Love with all of my friends, it's a great series, I highly suggest it. In the first or second book the main character decides to wear contacts instead of her glasses. There is a full page where it shows her with the contact on her finger putting it near her eyes. OH YES! I found it. Good, here we go.

The yellow didn't come out the way I would have liked it, but that's beside the point. Here we see Karin putting in a contact for the first time. Notice the size difference between her eye and the contact she is about to put on her eye. Any normal person can identify that the contact will cover maybe a fifth of her eye. You may say "Why didn't the artist just make the contact bigger?" Well, friend, think about it. How would it look for a perfectly normal sized finger to have a big floppy lens on it? It would look bad! Silly even, sillier than this picture above. This is reasonably acceptable for one of two reasons. Number One: Karin has a rare eye enlargement mutation in which it causes her eyes to be, well enlarged. Number Two: She is a character in a Japanese Manga in which all characters have eyes nearly half the size of their face.

I'm going to go with the latter. It's true, in most mangas and animes the people involved just have larger eyes. This quality is not one to aspire to have, it's not even cool.

So in reality the situation with Karin would be opposite for most human girls. Karin has a big eye and a small contact. Every other girl in the real world has a normal eye and a contact with a huge iris. See something wrong with that?

I guess we're always trying to improve ourselves and this is just a new way for people to do that. Maybe one day they will be legal, then fine, do what ever you like with your eyes, but for now maybe it should be forgotten. Some things like huge eyes are just not meant to be. I personally believe that changing your eye color shows an insecurity you may have with your own eye color, the same is true for hair color. I say if you were born with that color then keep it, you are who you are, not some shade of purple, red or blue.

XDara

Rock + Mermaid = Rock and Roll?

This is a drawing of a rock...in the ocean. I originally tried to draw a mermaid on the rock but it didn't really work out. I really like photoshop, it's great. I like the waves more than anything in this picture, they look so floaty.

Hey there! This is a mermaid I drew...it's not me as a mermaid, though. Crazy hair, right? Wow, the tail looked a lot better before I colored it in....oh well.

I should use this post to actually write instead of just posting pictures. Isn't it wonderful to find new music?

STOP THE PRESSES! In the middle of blogging I came upon a video that I need to write a post about. Soon to come!

XDara

They know that you know, and it's not the CIA

There comes a time in every young adult's life when she realizes certain invisible barriers have been torn down, but not like the Berlin Wall, no! This action was done with swiftness, agility, such an event could be compared to the removal of Stalin's statue in his hometown.

What is this moment when this realization occurs? When your parent says "Oh, she's heard that one before." Sure, you may know the inappropriate joke, word or phrase, but perhaps you are under the illusion that your parents don't know that you know.

It's a lie.

Your parents are very aware of what you know. Also I feel that when the eldest child learns of some secret code or something inappropriate at any age it just makes the age for the younger siblings to learn that very same thing even lower. For example: When I learned the meaning of a curse word at the age of fourteen, then my youngest brother learned it at eleven. BETTER EXAMPLE: [spoiler alerts for young children and the young at heart] I proved that Santa was not real when I was twelve, it may be a bit old but whatever, my youngest brother stopped believing when he was about ten.

It must be this aura "knowing" gives off, a presence, if you will.

So back to parents. When they start freely cursing and making references to things that you would rather not know about that's when you know they know. When you find yourself awkwardly watching TV with two adults laughing at a toothbrush commercial. Are you allowed to laugh, or are you better off playing the innocent card? Trust me, they know. If you are daring and decide to play the innocent card for such a long time and there comes a point in which the card is no longer available they may act surprised, but trust me, they aren't.

Some things are tolerable, such as curses and sexual references in movies. However, I have to draw the line at references to real events. I do not want to know about why the song "Blame it on the Alcohol" relates to the most recent addition to your family. I also would like to be exempt of all the gory details. Corruption of the young? How about corruption of those who don't care?

I apologize for lacking a direction in this post but I had to get it out, some things are just not appropriate no matter who you may think knows or does not know. Regardless on whether the people in the room are old enough to hear it does not mean they want to hear it. Honestly, no one really does.

XDara

"The children are melting!"

I like writing in a chair in front of a computer. Normally I sit at the dining room table with Francis and lean over it and God, it cannot be good for my back. I mean, I'm not leaning back into the chair or anything but it's nice to be at a computer at eye level. Sorry Francis.

Francis is my laptop if you haven't caught on. See I got him back at the end of the summer, I paid for most of him. He's pink and he's proud of it. Okay, you must be saying "This girl is insane, talking about her PC like it's alive." Truth is, I do that a lot. I do it to my dog all the time. I like to think she doesn't mind. I'm pretty sure it's not that uncommon. Personification is just another way for me to vent my creativity.

Why did I name him Francis? Well that's because of my father. He likes to say "Dara Ann Francis sitting in a tree..." so in honor of my dad [and because I didn't make my confirmation name Francis] I named him that. I have a friend with a whole household full of Lord of the Rings characters for computers. My mother's is "Urg" for all the times she has screamed at it.

Technology is so interesting lately; some transition, huh? Maybe it's not the technology that has me captivated, it's the people. With my recent lack of restraint regarding watching early episodes of Doctor Who I have fallen prey to the infamous Youtube! I mean, Charlie is partially responsible for my obsession with the show but because I have watched all of Charlie McDonnell and Alex Day's videos I had nothing to watch...and then I found the Vlog Brothers.

Normally two brothers vlogging would not interest me too much...but one of them is an author! John Green, I have not read any of his novels but I have read Scott Westerfield's! How do they relate? They're friends!

Oh, Scott Westerfield, creator of Peeps, The Last Days, So Yesterday and The Uglies Saga. I don't like the last series; this is mostly because the entire series is from a girl's point of view and I really like Westerfield's books that focus on a male character. I feel that he portrays females as floaty and stereotypical, but being a man he captures a different side of male characters which I find intriguing. I recomend Peeps, it's wonderful!

-Insert transition here- THE HEAT! I'm melting, or rather, the children are. The title is a quote from one of the parents at the bike decorating contest I went to for my GP. Okay, I'm exaggerating, I was melting this afternoon; it is almost 10:30 and my face is in place, not sliding off.

Meet one of the many groundhogs dwelling under my neighbor's shed; they eat our grass. Crazy, crazy, fat, fast running rodents.

XDara

Day 3: Bicycle! I want to ride my bike!

Happy Fourth everyone! That's the first time that I've said that all day. Truth is it doesn't feel like the Fourth of July without a parade. The holiday fell on a Sunday this year which meant that my neighborhood decided to have the annual parade on Saturday to avoid traffic problems with people going to church. It so happens that I had to go with Jeff to a bike decorating contest in a local town...at the same time.

The rest of this post has been done the day after the 4th because I got sucked into the wonderful confusion that is Bye Bye Birdie in which I realized that my generation is the one most likely to relate to that musical. And the dancing, what was that?! And then Oklahoma! came on, and I love that musical but never finished it because it was way too hot to be awake.

Okay enough of the musicals. If you can't tell, I love them.

So on that wonderful Saturday morning I got up and with the help of my lovely father found the way to this bike contest just in time to meet up with Jeff. Turns out the newspaper that Jeff works for runs the contest every year, so I saw the woman I met before again [her name is Paula!].

Little kids on wheels! So cute, the weather wasn't too bad and it was really fun to see little kids ride around on their Fourth of July bikes, streamers, dogs, lights, hats, helmets! The whole shebang! I got to meet even more people that Jeff knows, I swear he knows everyone, and he and I have determined that a shadow [a.k.a. me] is not an intern because I don't do work for him, I just follow him around.

I'm a little disappointed at the moment because I took all of these great videos of kids on their bikes and I was going to make a montage but my camera wouldn't cooperate with Windows Movie Maker. I will put up pictures later!

XDara

Hour Tracker: 10:30

Day Two: Jungle Joe in the industrial zoo

Okay, so I'm up to date, I just hope I can keep this up. Today I met Jeff at the mysteriously hidden local zoo. The zoo happens to be in the same county as my grandparents and I had never heard of it. When I drove over, thank you Mapquest, I realized why I had never heard of it: it was in the middle of an industrial center where buildings were rising.

Sure enough when I got there, early, there were families making their way to the zoo. I spent a good fifteen minutes just looking around at all of the signs in the small lobby. I talked to one of the workers, Dina, who told me about the zoo's goal for a 200 acre plot of land to expand the zoo in a more permanent home. She and I also shared common ground because both of our names started with D. I got a good chance to look at two large world maps, one of prehistoric animals [dinos, extinct animals] and another of modern day animals. I loved seeing all of the herbivores' friendly faces and the toothy grins of the carnivores.

I met up with Jeff and was introduced to Jungle Joe, former police officer, wildlife conservationist extraordinaire and Batman fanboy. [I hope that's alright to say, because he really was]. The interview was about Joe's recent trip down to the Gulf of Mexico. He took it upon himself to go down with a group of people and learn what exactly people were doing to help ease the situation.

BOOM

Boom is what is used to keep oil off of plants and shores, there are three layers of plastic and it was a little confusing to learn about what with the word BOOM always coming into play. Joe talked about the pelicans and how they are being affected when the oil gets on them. Actually so much was discussed in this interview I cannot cover it all. He talked about how fishermen were being paid to skim, communities and the Fish and Wildlife services working to clean the beaches and animals. He even mentioned how they are trying to trick some migratory birds into going to Texas.

Just above in that picture I'm holding a SPOT tracker. Joe uses it so that the people who read his SPOT blog can see where he is and where he has been, this was useful for when he was down by the gulf. He estimates that down there alone they covered at least eight thousand miles.

After the interview we got to look inside the zoo where I got to pet a small, big eared Australian Fox named Frankie. I was surprised at how many diverse animals such a small zoo could have. There was an Eagle Owl that had imprinted [eh, eh Jacob fans] on Joe as a small baby bird and was hooing at us. There were lemurs! I love lemurs, so cute. It was a great experience and thanks to my AP Environmental class I knew all about what Joe was saying.

If this crisis should teach us anything it's this: oil may have occurred naturally on Earth but it was not meant to be used by humans, we only do selfish things with it. Alternative energy is the way to go, the way to be. Generations of species may be altered because of this event, let's make sure that we do our best to teach the next generation not to make the same mistakes so that whatever is left of these species is not lost forever.

XDara

Hour Tracker: 7:30 hours

Day 1: Washington Crossing

Yesterday, I know I should have blogged about it the day it happened but I went to go see Eclipse, I officially started shadowing Jeff, the editor of a local newspaper. After standing around for about fifteen minutes, the receptionist had no idea who I was looking for and just let me in, I met a woman named Petra [pronounced Peetra, she and I had a great conversation about people mispronouncing our names]. She sat me down and with Jeff's absence told me her schedule for that day and how she was going to go about writing the article. She even asked me to decide which order the topics would go in: Road Improvement, Video Broadcasting and Wind Power. I chose this order because road improvement is the most relevant to local people because it will affect them the most and wind power is a long term effect that may not happen for quite some time.

A bit later Jeff came in and got organized. Despite the fact that he is an editor his desk is just like everyone else, even his manager has the same form of desk. He introduced me to this woman, whose name escapes me, but her office was in a separate room, I guess she is important. She was the first of many to tell me that Jeff was the right man to shadow.

Okay I have to move faster...Then we went to Washington Crossing where there was a signing of this document. The situation was this: The park usually gives interpretative tours to members of the community and school trips, this means that reenactors teach people about the history of the park. However, with the government cutting funds back in November these tours stopped. Then a group of about fifteen people got together from the community and volunteered to run the park for free. So the event I went to was a signing of a legal document that allows the group to run and redo the visitor center. There was also a "ribbon cutting," which was more like George Washington cutting a rope with his sword.

I got the chance to see Jeff in action, I swear he knew everyone. He asked for statements, was friendly, and, to my surprise, was recording the whole thing. I asked him later how he managed not to take notes the whole time and he pulled out a clunky recorder, it amazes me how he hid it. Before the rope cutting I was given the task of using the video recorder to well, record videos of speeches. I admit, my finger did slip in front of the camera once.

Then came the stressful part, Jeff actually knows what he is doing! Which is great, but I was taken by surprise when he said things like "What did you learn? What would your lead be?" Now, I am not an "on the spot" writer, I need time to think. I can only hope that I will get better at this.

XDara

Hour Tracker: 4:30 hours