Monday, August 11, 2008

Thoughts from a busy busy week

Well my younger sibs. went camping this weekend and I got my school schedule and the Olympics started and therefore I haven't posted!! So here's a latest update on all my thoughts.

Quote (first so that it won't be missed): “True Love is not simply an emotional Response. It manifests itself in acts of kindness, generosity and those actions that produce the greatest benefit to the object loved.” ~ William Wilberforce

Thoughts on...
1) Antietam National Battlefield
Rather terrifying. More than a thuosand men died there during a 13 hour battle. If that was the carnage from one battle, think how many families were hurt, how terrible the rest of the war must have been? And now we just go and look on as curious tourists. Very sad. I hate studying the wars. I think that I would have been one of the settlers wo moved west to escape the civil war. I'm personally more interested in random but peaceful stories, like Emma Thompson, the girl spy who played boy and then stole across enemy lines.

2) the movie Mamma Mia! (Warning: if you want to see it this part will spoil it, so skip it and come back after you've seen the movie if you want it to be a surprise)

At the end of the movie there's a bit with Colin Firth's character being gay. I personally was aaffronted by that and found it very unnessecary. it added nothing to the original plot and sulied the actor for me. A friend of mine, Nancy, says that she tries not to let an actors personal life affect her opinion of thier acting skills, and not to let the roles they've played affect her opinion of them. While that is a worthy goal, and I also try to follow it, I think that by agreeing to play this part Colin Firth is inadvertantly showing his approval of male-male relationships. He's popular enuogh to have turned it down but he didn't, and sad to say that has to reflect on his character.

Also the rest of the movie had confusing morals and ideas. The Mom in the movie slept with 3 men the summer she was pregnant and suffered almost no emotional consequences. She has no idea who her daughter's father is and frankly doesn't care. At the end of the movie each man agrees to 'take a third' of Sophie and it seems to approve of the mother's wild summer twenty years before. Appropriate? I think not.

And another thing. At the end of the movie, the young Sophie decides at the Alter that she doesn't want to marry at all, and rather she'll go around the world with this boy unmarried, having sex all over the place! They claim they love one another, why not say the vows and consecrate thier relationship? Nope, not in hollywood.

Finally the mother gets married to her first summer fling boy who was engaged at the time of thier first meeting and he fooled around. Went home., got married, got divorced, camp back and married his summer love. Confusing? yes. But why was he fooling around that original summer if he was engaged, hmmm?

The Music was OK, catchy, the girlfriend theme was cute, but the moral ideas were not a winner with me.

3) Pride in my heritage
I watched the opening of the Olympics, with it's obvious Chinease Culture and heritage. The chinese people are proud of who they are. I'm proud to hail from that nation and carry thier blood. No, I'm not proud of communism, but I think they deserve this Olympics and are being good hosts, and I'm glad I can claim part of it.

I'm also proud to be a marylander. once again, I'm not proud that Baltimore was a great slave port or of other mistakes, but I'm proud of Michael Phelps and Katie Hoff, proud of our civil war soldiers, proud of the people, even proud of our crabs.

4) School schedule
While everyone else complains about teachers and having to go back, I'm looking forward to finally getting back to a routine and meeting my new teachers. Yep, I'm a nerd, and I'm proud of it. I have a fire for learning that my friends lack.

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