On the subject of an Education

Hey so here is one of those random posts i promised to toss out here once every so often. Why am i writing this? Well a blog i follow brought something to my attention which i want to write about. The link to the news article is http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_16029/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=pmVmhDzd go check it out for the article that gives the bare bones facts (or at least i thought it did, but i am biased)

The best way to basically sum it up is that this teacher got sick and tired of the way her students behaved and so she wrote rants on her blog online, which she maintained anonymously. Somehow some of her students figured out that she was writing about them and complained to the school (kinda funny considering one of her main problems with them was that they were whiny...)

Anywho, because grade 10-12 students are so fragile and need to be shielded from every single bit of criticism she was suspended from her job without pay and might be fired. She is meanwhile preparing to sue to keep her job because she was exercising her right to free speech (or so her lawyer plans to argue)

Now this becomes an issue for me because i obviously don't really make much of an effort to hide who i am. My profile picture is really me, i like my blog to my twitter which links to my tumblr which links to my facebook. They all are connected, all attempting to promote my viewpoint and more importantly my writing.

That being said my issue with what is occurring to this teacher is that, at least from what i have gathered, she DIDN'T try and get noticed by anyone. She was using blogs for what i still occasionally do, she has been writing an online journal instead of a pen and paper one. Why?

I don't know, and frankly it is none of my business. But for some reason people seem determined to unmask every single anonymous person who writes things online that are controversial. And lets be honest, the best writing is all about controversy.

I know that the blogs Waiter Rant(who apparently is down today meaning i can't link to him), Girl with a one track mind, and Opinionistas were all blogs that i followed, and all wrote about things that might get the fired or shunned. Each and every one of them suffered someone trying to find out who they are (and in at least one case succeeding)

The problem here is that the internet is a place where if you want you are supposed to be able to go out and say whatever you want into it, and if you want you don't need to attach your name. I don't put any names into my posts, be it the name of my school or people i might be happening to write about.

Why? Because they didn't say i could. Why do these kids currently piss me off? Because she didn't list names, she didn't call people out specifically. She just ranted about the way kids act, and all they did was prove her right.

A Look at a Dream

Hey kids, how goes it all out there? I am going to write about a movie that for the love of god i hope you all have watched already. If you haven't go see it, NOW! The movie i am talking about is Inception, just in case you hadn't guessed.

Now if you happen to be one of the six people in this country who hasn't seen Inception yet then stop reading right now and go see it. By doing this you make life easier on me and harder on yourself.

Yes you will, why? Cause this movie is gonna fuck with your head. Why? I honestly have no clue, did it fuck with mine the first and only time i saw it? No. I found the movie uncomplicated and kinda simple. I know. Inception. Uncomplicated. WTF right?

It was the first movie i have seen in a long time where i called damn near everything. To be fair that's because normally i expect these movies to be a little more complicated than they actually are so Inception being predicted by me just means that it is more complex than the average movie.

Now why do i think Inception fucks with people's heads more than the average movie? Mainly because of the subject matter. See like the awesome movies of the past it deals with what is real and what is fiction? It begs the question that started oh so long ago with one of my least favorite philosophers Descartes which is how do we know it all isn't a dream?

When it comes down to it there have been many movies that express this idea, one of the first ones i heard of was The Matrix. Another one would be the lesser known but equally awesome movie Waking Life. A truly great example that in a way quite nicely paralleled Inception would be The Nines which stars Ryan Reynolds.

What makes Inception such a great example of this type of movie is that while the overall plot of the movie is great there is no giant jumps in the plot that completely shake things up. Instead each step is logically spelled out while the movie follows the same sort of settings as Jason Bourne movies or the number of different movies which have followed in its "globe trotting, exploding action fest" of different locations.

Inception takes this way of jumping from location to location and gives it a somewhat quasi logic to why it goes from place to place, and presents reasons for why things happen the way they do. At the same time Inception offers complete and total control of an area (the dream) where whatever idea you want to implement is possible. It also opens up the notion of becoming addicted to it (note the people who couldn't dream anymore). Now there are probably more things that it links into, common themes that most people can relate to which is why the movie draws people in so well. The final one of these that comes to my mind is the cliche of the distant father figure and the hope to be reunited.

As well look into where the entire fracking movie takes place. In a dream. Dreams continue to be one of the many mysteries which modern psychology cannot explain in a reasonable enough fashion and so it is like sailing into the Bermuda triangle or traveling to another planet. Anything becomes possible there.

Now don't get me wrong, there is nothing against the rules with using a number of different tools to manipulate the way that people act and think. There is nothing wrong with a movie manipulating your emotions. That's what they are there to do. But at the same time when you sit down and think about Inception, maybe read a little basic psych, you should be able to see most if not all of the twists and turns coming.