Zotters Blog

Ah, before I begin, I feel I have not properly introduced myself. My name is John, a recent UCI graduate who majored in political science/minored in film & media studies. Unfortunately, I've been gone from the States for about a month or so, enjoying the post-graduation thrills that many indulge in and therefore, have not been able to post at all. My guess is that as I continue to blog, I'll continue to introduce myself in various ways. You'll have to forgive me though; I have not regularly blogged since the days Xanga. Although I'll cover a myriad of info, topics I am most concerned with are within media along with some politics, food, etc. But I digress.

This mainstream summer of movies has been a fairly good movie season compared especially to last year so far. Although littered with lots of comic-book adaptations and comedies, every film I've watched so far has been at the very least tolerable/enjoyable. However, two films have caught my eye the most not only for being entertaining but for being both innovative and smart: WALL-E and The Dark Knight. This will not be so much a review of the films but hopefully some interesting food for thought either if you have watched or haven't watched these films.

WALL-E is Pixar's annual animation entry, this time from Andrew Stanton who many may know from Finding Nemo. It is Pixar's most ambitious film to date and attempts to push two intriguing issues to the forefront: a) Can a modern, silent, children's film be

If you asked me a year ago about Batman Begins, I would have told you it was like an overdone noodle casserole; too cheesy and way too dark (visually). Christian Bale’s rough and gritty Batman voice came off as ridiculous and silly at times, and the storyline hopped from one plot point to the next at an unsteady pace.

That being said, Dark Knight blew my mind.

Let me be more specific; Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker blew my mind, and as the Joker was the catalyst for the entire movie, I guess the movie by chemical plot reaction blew my mind as well. Just when you think the superhero/supervillian genre is dying out after God-knows-how-many superhero movie remakes, along comes the Joker. Ledger delivers an intriguing and unnerving character villain driven not by greed and not even so much by personal motives as he is by his complete lack of morals and personal want to see everything fall to hell. “I won’t kill you because you’re just too much fun!” he tells Batman at one point. The Joker is a man who takes great glee in corrupting people, turning them into agents of chaos and even on one another. What’s more, the Joker possesses the mindset and means to accomplish such a situation where ethics clash with each other. This is exemplified when a greedy accountant stumbles upon evidence of Bruce Wayne’s link to Batman and goes on a talk show. Before he reveals Batman’s identity, the Joker calls in live and informs the viewers that if the accountant is not dead within

The CDC recently released results from a new survey that indicates that Mississippi, once again, holds the shameful title of "The Most Obese State," a title they've had since 2004. In fact, the South in general seems to have some issues with buttoning their pants - the highest rates of obese adults are all found in this region.

Sadly, the article also points out that the rate holds true for children as well. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has recently recommended that children as young as two years of age have their cholesterol levels checked and that cholesterol-lowering drugs be considered in children eight years of age or older that cannot lower high cholesterol levels in more conventional ways. Their explanation is that children who are in danger of becoming obese or are already need to take better care of their cardiovascular health.

This is scary, indeed. I can remember when there was maybe one "fat kid" in the classroom, and it was pretty much accepted that there was nothing s/he could do about the situation (although this understanding didn't quite assuage the class bullies and/or the generic child trying to gain a tenuous foothold in the delicate hierarchy that is grade school politics). Now when I observe elementary school classes, I cannot help but notice that at least 25% of the kids are obese (and not just "big for their age"). And I think we all know that there is something that can be done about their situation; obviously the AAP thinks

Gift cards are absurd and ridiculous, and in that order. As if our commodity-driven lives need yet another milestone icon of consumerism, the popularity of gift cards seems to have soared off the charts in recent years.

Gift cards are merely the latest evolution of an age-old concept known as scrip, a practice where tokens or certificates are used in place of actual value or currency. Such practices used to be initiated only in dire situations like remote coal towns or countries being occupied during a time of war. Other occassions included the military who wanted to prevent black markets from springing up or various cheapass companies who want to concoct a sort of cyclical internal loyalty by "allowing" employees to cash in payment scrip for goods at regulated company stores. (And of course we can't forget the huge yet shortlived 1990's trend of using scrip for school fundraisers.)

All to say, scrip was never particularly desirable. "Ain't nothing like cash in the pocket!" is how the saying used to go. But these days, oh how things have changed. After corporate America discovered the unending benefits of tricking consumers into obsessing over scrip and gift cards, the pace has sped up exponentially.

 

Attn: people who want to grow up to be physicians, people who like touching anecdotes, and anyone who wants to read a new post!

Most, if not, all American medical schools have this event at the beginning of your schooling called the white coat ceremony. There the newly minted medical students and their families get to hear about the importance of being a compassionate doctor, and at the end, a distinguished faculty member helps each student put on their new short white coat on for the first time. From afar, it's a totally cheesy event, but it really is quite touching. Of course, after the white coat ceremony, the first year largely consists of one's nose in a book (or computer), and it's easy to forget about all the good we all planned to do.

As part of my summer program outside of my institution, I got to shadow at a medical unit of a general hospital, and for the first time, I actually contributed to the assessment and care of some patients on my own. Unlike my past clinical experiences in med school, these were real, not standardized (fake), patients, and I was basically on my own to perform these exams. Even though what I did was not invasive or anything, it is always important to remember that sometimes the best plans of action are simple and not technological at all.

Having finished my first year of medical school, I still feel like I barely know anything pertinent to medical practice, but on several occasions as I walked through that hospital in my short white

Since this is my first blog, I should introduce myself and give a brief history of my current personal life before I begin talking about what I'm doing for cash.

I'm Jerry and I'm going to be a sophomore and I haven't really figured out my major yet. I did a lot of journalism and photojouranlism in high school and it's something I really like. Right now I'm a business econ major, but that's more of a cop-out than a passion. Have to keep up appearances for the parents so they'll have somebody nice to counter with the next time coworkers get chatty.

Anyways, before the beginning of this summer I pledged to take the equivalent of Math 2B at a local community college despite that it was an 8-12AM class Monday through Thursday. It was only a month of morning math, so the suffering would only be temporary -- I hoped. Then the first day came around, went to class, withered, came home and decided it wasn't going to work out unless I was being paid by the hour. My parents felt otherwise, we compromised, and I audited the class. Being the obedient kid that I am, I held up my end of the deal and stopped going to class.

Why?

I needed job experience and money more than calculus. Calculus was like everything I'd known until then -- it was predictable, boring, and too concrete. I wanted to try something new even if it would seem like a step backwards rather than forwards.

So now I work at Big 5, looking as good a minimum wage worker can in a dress-shirt-and-tie. The biggest draw for

We categorize things into what we know. It helps making thinking easier - it's simply human nature, we categorize so that we think more quickly and to process more information. We group known characteristics together into groups, and for those who may have taken social psychology, you know it be called "social schema." More or less little groups of certain characteristics. I work well with examples so here we go! An example of this would be like that of a "typical gangster" - what would this gangster wear? Baggy jeans, baggy shirt, maybe a bandana, and perhaps he uses an uneducated way of speaking. If we meet some random person like this off the street, we'd probably automatically think "oh shit, he's a gangster!" In reality, he MAY be a gangster, or he simply may dress and speak that way as a way to fit in with a social group at his school or area, or he just likes that type of clothing and he actually goes to church every Sunday.

Let's take this a bit further and apply this to what we think is attractive, what we like. I was discussing this topic with my homie awhile back; we were talking about white girls. We talk about how they were in bed, about talking to them, about everything. He didn't really enjoy white girls, he's Asian as well by the way, and he says that it'd be very different in bed. As we know, the typical white girl is bigger than the typical Asian girl. He then applied it to the types of girls he likes, and he does prefer the thinner girls. Since I've had a

The Green "Revolution" is starting to grate on my nerves.

OK, it makes me a horrible human being to admit it, but it's true. It's been something I have been wanting to get off of my chest for some time now. All those stickers in the bathroom telling me to 'Think Green - take only what you need," the banners promoting carpooling . . . they only serve to anger me.

It's not the conservation that angers me; it's the fact that everyone should have been behaving responsibly this entire time. People shouldn't need a sticker telling them to only as many paper towels as they need (which makes me wonder - how many paper towels were people taking before the stickers, and what exactly what were they doing with them?) or to carpool if they can.

We should have been conserving this entire time, not just because it's now the current fad. I have always tried to live my life as conservative as possible (I can thank my depression-era grandmother for teaching me this important lesson), so it's really irritating when I have environmental zealots chastising me for my lifestyle choices. One memory that comes to mind is a friend from northern California that made me feel bad for a lunch pack I had purchased for the purpose of being mobile while traveling - apparently it had too much packaging for her taste and she felt it appropriate to criticise my purchase. (This coming from someone who has no problem taking advantage of others, yet when it comes to the "environment," it seems that as long

This is a topic that I plan on spending a significant amount of time discussing.

Before I hand you the red pill and show you the truth, I want you to explore the possibility and open your mind to believing that aging can be cured.