Obligatory Thankgiving Blog IV

I actually only do these once every few years, looking back at the others.  I see how my life has changed, how different things (except my heater) that I've been thankful for, different people, different jobs.  I think it's a different button that I'm thankful for this year... the "off" button.  I've realized that there are so many electronic gadgets at my house that I never really get around to doing the things that are really important.  So I looked at what games I was playing online, "Bejeweled Blitz," for instance, and saw that it was serving no real purpose, that the learning curve was gone, so I stopped playing. I turned it off.  True, there are some useless games I still play, like those on the GSN site, but only for a few minutes, like Solitare (which actually has a very useful application if it's 3AM and you're in a dorm room with no AC and sick as a dog...long story).  It's like going to a Chinese Buffet.  You stuff yourself, and you think you've enjoyed it, but you walk out feeling "blah" and 3 hours later, you're hungry again.  Useless, but sometimes you just have a craving for an egg roll.  So in moderation, uselessness is okay.

Or the Disney Channel shows I have watched.  I think that has to do with the shut down of Shake It Up and the continuation of truly sorry shows on the station. So, I turned them off. I might one day download them and watch them, but right now, I'm content not to.  I need to read all the books I have in my house, anyway.  All these books, it's a sign of one's mortality.  I see all the people donating books to the library every day, and I realize that, in doing so, I would be acknowledging my mortality, that I would never possibly get to all the books in my library, so why not get rid of them.  May I live long enough to read all of them.

I'm thankful for the Nancy Guinn Library, and the Friends of the Library organization I belong to.  I'm still in touch with the books that I love to sell, with the authors and titles that I've read over the years, and I feel the challenge of showing the public of Rockdale County how valuable a repository of books and other media is to everyone's lives.  Here, in this building, is the knowledge we seek to grow, outside the meager education system we have currently.  All those words, all those thoughts, and they sit on those shelves and in those computer banks, just waiting to be plucked out and processed in our minds.  Woven like a quilt with all the other experiences and bytes of data jumbled like thread in our brains.  And it's all there!!

I'm also thankful to Gwen for recruiting me for the organization, and for helping me to get a car when I needed one so badly.  It allows me to walk all over this community of ours and see the beauty right beyond my own door.  You can see pictures of all that in any number of blogs prior to this.  I'm so thankful I live in a place with such diversity and beauty as Rockdale County.  I should have been walking years ago.

 I'm thankful for the conversations I've had with friends online, like Jacob, Chris, and Davis, giving me the chance to offer help and support to others.  It's amazing to see people walking down those paths, working on their own dreams and goals. I've always been a helper, it's what I do.  Use words and thoughts to help other people down that road toward whatever destination they have.  I know Davis, in particular, will arrive at those mountain tops, and stand proudly at the culmination of his dreams. I only hope I can help.  

So now I must go to bed, and rise tomorrow to face another Christmas shopping season at a bookstore, with all the hard work and joy that it brings.  Only a month from now, it'll be a new year (well, almost) and time for new challenges, new opportunities, new paths to walk down.  I will be thankful for the sun when it rises, that the warm air will pick up my feet and I shall walk those new roads, wherever they may take me.

Everything Wants To Be Noticed

Ever notice how, on family sitcoms, that children seem to invent wild and crazy plans to get in or out of trouble? Somehow sneaking on a train to Los Angeles to be on some silly reality show, or using lifelike wax figures of the kids to be in bed while they go off to some big party (Shake it Up and ANT Farm respectively) And no matter how inept the parents are (and believe me, some of the Disney Channel parents are incredibly inept, almost too much so), they find out about the deception and the kids get in trouble.  Of course, there's the inevitable finding out about whatever trouble-making is going on.  Let's take Good Luck Charlie as an example. Gabe (Bradley Steven Perry) releases crickets into the library (one of the best lines delivered on that show, "Library's quiet, crickets are noisy... you try things."), or he pours superglue on his neighbor's front porch. He doesn't really think he's gonna get away with it, does he? Gabe does it for the attention, to be noticed. It's obvious the reasoning is that he's the middle of 4 (or 5) kids, so he does mischievous things to stand out. Then there's the older two, PJ (Jason Dolley) and Teddy (Bridgit Mendler), who try throwing parties when their parents are out of town.  A social ploy, hoping to get noticed in high school. Course, all that ever happens is the parents punishing them.  I remember giving my brother a haircut... all over the kitchen floor.  Course, I didn't think I was going to get into trouble then (probably because I wasn't thinking.), but I did.  If there's one thing that Disney Channel shows have in common, it's that actions have consequences. Inevitably, the kids on those shows do the right thing, even if it takes them a while.



The truth is, as Art Garfunkel and Buddy Mondlock sang on the song, everything wants to be noticed. Its the reason pain is there, a cry for help in the nervous systems in the body.  It's why the clunks and clangs of a car before it breaks down, the grinding of the break pads. Ignore them, and the heart gets worse, the car breaks down.  And people feel the need to be noticed, too.  Even if it means doing something negative, they are noticed.  I feel so badly for those actors who, when they think their careers aren't going anywhere, or not fast enough, do something outrageous to get noticed by the press. The media become the enablers who broadcast stupidity around the world.

Speaking of stupidity, there's a group of child "stars," who feel that being noticed is the apex of their lives.  The internet is quite willing to help them.  Youtube lets us see into the everyday lives of people all around the world.  Amazing, to some extent, as you're able to see how people live in different countries, to see the beauty of mankind and of nature.  Let's focus on one kid, Sam Porttorff, who is famous just for blabbering on Youtube.  He's part of a group of "youtubers" called "Our Second Life."  This is not to say they don't have talent, but they haven't got picked up by any agencies for movies or music or anything.  They stay online and talk about their lives.  Sam has quite a bit of talent, but I think he's going to wasted it trying to get noticed. Take a look at this video, of a trip with his friends to San Diego.  It's the camera work that's amazing, the perspective of the world through the lens.  It brings you along with him, to the beaches and the boardwalks of that California city.



Now go look at any of the related videos afterward, of him chugging Arizona Tea until he vomits, or the endless lip-syncing of the latest Justin Beiber hit.  It's a complete waste of his talent, just so the girls will oogle over him.  And when he grows up? What then? When the teens fall away to some other pre-shaven pre-adolescent whose only desire is to look cute and to be noticed? He will have nothing but the desperation to have what he once had, which drives those like Lohan to act out in negative ways.  Or he can take the gifts he has now and develop them into artwork, into something truly special.  It's his choice, and he'll probably make more money just having girls oogle over him, but at the cost of what happiness?

To return to being noticed... social media does a lot to exacerbate that feeling.  Detectives often find the perpetrators of crimes through their bragging on Facebook or Twitter.  Acts of vandalism here in my county are often solved, and the people arrested, because they brag about spray painting the football field on their social media sites, and someone turns them in.  People do bad things to be noticed, and it's remarkable, since the Internet is triumphed as a place of anonymity.  Be free to say anything you want! Do anything you want to do! No one's watching! Create fake accounts to cyber-bully those in your school, causing undue harm upon them.  Shout obscenities at celebrities who are only trying to reach out to their fans, and do it just because.... to see what happens.  It's all done to see the results of those actions.  To brag to friends, "Look what I did! He/She deleted his/her Twitter account, all because of me! What power I have!!" They want to be noticed.

Davis Cleveland (Shake it Up) has had even worse problems, with someone actually hacking into his social media accounts and taking them over, and worse, effecting his bank accounts and other personal property. And since, supposedly, you can be anonymous online, they can't be caught.  Or so they think.  Most people don't take into consideration that the trail we leave online is traced, logged, and stored in massive databases in case the police need to use it as evidence.  Even if someone uses a VPN server, it's still possible, with a lot of work, to track through the real IP address of the person involved.  In fact, in today's world, I doubt that the people involved in hacking Davis' accounts failed to recognize that fact.  I think they wanted to be noticed.  To say, "This is what I've done!! Look at me!" even while they are led off to jail. The problem is, they will get noticed, but for the very opposite from what they  wanted.

At the end of every Disney show, after the shenanigans and the mischievousness, friends make up, parents and children hug, even after the grounding, and everything's okay.  To look at it through a Christian's eyes, it's about forgiveness.  It's about hoping that these people, who are so full of desperation and negativity, will be noticed by people who love them, not who hate them.  We all need to be loved by someone, by family, friends, our Lord.  And we are, but never seem to realize that.  It would be interesting to see who the person behind Davis' hacking was, why they did it, and what their lives are really like. I think we would see that it's not hate from the world they want, but love from the few people around them.

On Hatred: The Dental Argument

I talked before, in a blog about Anger, how all the negative things that happen in our lives, if not properly dealt with, become a hardened core in the soul, effectively killing the person inside. I've always said that the shooter that went into Columbine High in Colorado was dead long before he actually killed himself. He no longer had a soul, his heart was merely a hard core of anger.

Think of all the negative things that happen in a person's life as the bacteria that forms in the mouth. All the name calling, the insults, the gay slurs posted online, the yelling of parents late at night, all of this, becomes like germs floating around in the brain, in the blood stream. Most people are able to relax, to balance it out with positive influences. They listen to music, they spend time with those that they love, they worship in church, letting God ease those dark times. There are those, however, that let the germs fester, forming, to follow the metaphor, plaque around the teeth, blackening the enamel, hollowing out the insides, making the body a delicate, painful, brittle thing. The pain of a tooth that has been eaten away by plaque is unbearable (and I know from much experience). It's the same as the negativity that flows around in the soul. It becomes hardened, starts eating away at everything that is special and dear. Take the recent terrorists in Boston, they had promising careers, in medicine, sports, etc..., but were eaten away by all the negativity thrown at them from many different sources, not the least of which were the violent anti-American videos promoted by Muslim radicals. By the time they set those bombs at the Marathon, they were simply shells of that evil plaque. It is only by the grace of God that the younger one survived to allow us to know what was actually going on. It does show that maybe the younger brother still had a little soul left in him, something that might be salvageable  else he would have killed himself. (And I say that in total recognition that what he did with his brother was the act of pure evil, and he must receive the consequences of that. I only hope that he can be rescued, Saved (in the Christian sense of the word) before he dies or is executed. Only God can forgive him now.

Going back to evil as a germ, as bacteria, it is easily spread, from one person to another, by bullies at school, by the kids who throw gay slurs at nine year olds online, by anyone that hasn't washed those germs clean. And it's so important that we look out for it in our everyday lives. It's everywhere in society, and we don't even notice it sometimes. Go watch TMZ for an episode, or see the Reality TV shows where people stab each other in the back. Even the night talk shows, like Jay Leno, who insult Lindsay Lohan daily, are doing nothing but making that actress worse. The spiritual life and internal fortitude of those stars must be so strong to withstand the constant barrage of evil thrown at them every single day.

Go to Instagram, on the "popular" page, and pick out any picture of a person (a "selfie," they call it), and you'll see, among the useless cries of "I luv u!!!," girls who post "gay" or "go kill yourself." Then the supporters go after the "trolls," and a cursing war breaks out, all in front of children who don't need that in their lives. I've mentioned before Davis Cleveland, who withstood (and continues to deal with) a constant barrage of insults from people online. And while I know he's strong enough to ignore them and persue his dreams, I worry about the lingering effects of all this. So many child stars have grown up spiraling down into addictions, negative behavior, and some, even suicide (Jonathan Brandis, for instance), and many of them were stars well before the Internet. What effects will social media have on these actors as they mature and grow? The good part about Davis' life is that he has a solid Christian background, supportive parents, and friends both physical and online, that lift him up and provide that positive encouragement. I'm actually surprised in the many young actors now that are Christians, and I hope that God will carry them "through" the fires they face each day.

 

Davis Cleveland and the Chaos of Twitterverse

Sounds like a book, doesn't it? Actually, it's a serious problem that is obviously more rampant than most parents and adults know about.  First, a brief introduction.  Davis Cleveland is a Texas-born actor who plays "Flynn," Bella Thorne's mischievous little brother on the Disney sit-com Shake It Up.  His storylines are, in my opinion, too short (pun intended,) and he was born to play the role.  The banter he had with "Henry" (Buddy Handleson) was hilarious, some of the best lines on Disney in the past year or two.  A couple of clips here:

 

The clip on the left actually brought about some interesting events outside of television, and, like uncovering bugs from under a rock, it uncovered a not-so-nice side of children these days.  The episode in question had Cece and Rocky going to a party hosted by "Shake it Up Chicago" moderator Gary Wilde. There were at the party supermodels who took an instant liking to Flynn when he shows up with his mom, busting the party.  There are a couple of jokes made about how the supermodels don't eat, etc...  Well, turns out that former Disney actress Demi Lovato saw the episode, and, having had bouts with eating disorders, among other things, went onto Twitter and http://www.nickandmore.com/2011/12/24/demi-tweets-disney-pulls-episodes/">criticized Disney for not having girls of all sizes on the shows.  Davis tweeted back, http://demelzellion.wordpress.com/2011/12/24/twitter-drama-davis-cleveland-vs-demi-lovato/"> taking up for the show. I'm not trying here to analyze who was right or wrong.  Notice that the Tweets were done shortly before Christmas, 2011.  From that point until now, fans of Demi Lovato have been barraging Davis' twitter account with threats, curses, and insults, most of which have overshadowed his efforts to help out fans with Cystic Fibrosis, and more recently, helping out the (far too late) cause of preventing bullying at school.  To show a demonstration, and to warn you, it does contain vulgarities:

Now, everyone's up to date.  To analyze this mess, we have to see how the Internet has changed our way of thinking, of communicating.  For, as Neil Postman famously said, "The Medium is the Message."  The Internet has created an instant communication relay, allowing anyone and everyone to talk about anything without regulation or censorship.  It has, as Postman talked about in The Disappearance of Childhood, taken away the ability of parents to control what information children receive. It is now entirely possible for kids, or anyone, to find out about anything instantly, from terroristic ideas to pornography of every variety.  It also has the ability, through Twitter and Facebook, to provide an instant open communication between a child and potentially every person on Earth.  This has brought the teasings and insults that children would normally get in school (and believe me, I've been the target of many of them), and launches them into the privacy and safety of the child's bedroom.  Thus the recent suicides due to cyber-bullying.  

What I want to understand, however, is exactly why this happens.  The internet effectively removes all barriers between children and the outside world.  In a place where everyone is equal, where social media makes everyone closer than they could possibly be before, it also isolates people to be utterly alone.  People are at once surrounded by friends, and totally alone.  Isolated and anonymous.  As if they were stranded on some far off island.

Which is what brings me to Davis' situation.  The girls who have insulted Davis can be easily compared to the boys stranded on the island in William Golding's Lord of the Flies.  Without rules, the boys slowly turn into feral beings, turning on friends and companions and wishing their deaths.  And Piggy, the sole voice of conscience in the story, is killed when a boulder is dropped on his head.  It is only when adults show up in the end and rescue them that the boys start to weep, to show remorse for all that's happen.  The island was set on fire by the boys, trying to get their enemies flushed out, and thus the place where they enjoyed freedom becomes a nightmare and unlivable. 

Twitter has become much like that island for some children, where vile insults and, honestly, death threats, are launched through the twitterverse without repercussion.  There is no thought of right or wrong, simply of entering text and pressing "Enter."  And since the idea of anonymity is so strong online, there are no consequences for any thought or word placed in cyberspace.  Thus the rumors of RIP(insert famous person here), or the cyber-bullying of students and the outright lies that float around on the Internet ocean like so much Flotsam.  

There are no boundaries on the Internet.  Now, the question is, how to fix the problem?  Parents can try to monitor and provide regulations for their children on what can be done and said online.  The websites could try some sort of technical restrictions on Facebook accounts, especially of famous people and television shows most likely to be followed by children. I say this because the amount of disgusting things hurled at iCarly's Facebook posts every day is amazing.  You should check them out.  It's very easy to get around age restrictions, but certainly something can be done.  But for the most part, it's up to the children online to regulate themselves.  Why would children like those above say those things?  It makes no sense.  But if kids were taught ethics, right from wrong, instead of being set free in the midst of the world's ideas without a single road to follow, maybe a lot of this mess could be controlled.  I guess it's up to the discipline given out by the parents.  And I've been a teacher and a retail worker long enough to know that parents' able to discipline their children effectively are getting fewer and fewer.  It's also up to children, in the online community, to understand the technology they are operating. Facebook can be easily controlled so that those who would say harmful things are blocked.  And if those insulting things are said by people that you don't know (I would say that all of the people hurling insults at Davis have never even met him, nor he them. ), just ignore them.  Take them as part of the static and noise that covers the Internet. Davis is ignoring them, while showing the world how, without rules, children become feral monsters, taking down anyone with lies, vulgarity, even threats.  It is good that Davis is as strong as he is, and that he realizes that very few of these kids will ever meet him.  Notice that the threats that are pictured above happened in February, some two months after the original exchange.  It's my advice that some of these people get help, from their parents, or from psychologists.  Without rules, these girls will wind up becoming adults with major problems, and words will become actions.  We don't need this.  

What we need to do is laugh.  Thankfully, Disney, Davis Cleveland and his crew, as well as most of the other shows are there to make us forget about some of this junk.  If only life were more like some of these episodes, with all the problems taken care of in 22 minutes.  But, alas, in today's world, it's just not to be.