1.)
This weekend the only horror movie I saw was the movie Fido.  This is a movie about zombies but the story is not necessarily what you think it would be.  Like all zombie movies, the zombies are undead creatures that are hungry for human flesh. However, in this movie, rather than killing all the zombies, the humans have found a way to contain them using some type of color.  This gives the humans complete control of the zombies and instead of humans fighting zombies, they keep the zombies as pets or servants.  The story is about a boy named Timmy who gets a zombie and falls in love with him like a boy falls in love with a dog.  He names this zombie Fido and does everything with him but when the zombies color malfunctions, Fido eats the next door neighbor and Timmy has tries to do everything to keep him.

2.)
If I were in the world with some type of apocalypse going on, it would definitely be a zombie apocalypse.  I'm not sure how the zombie outbreak would happen though. Maybe a science experiment gone wrong or some kind of mutation of swine flu probably.  In this world full of zombies humans are scarce but there are still a good few left, just spread out and not all together.  I see me with a large group of my friends.  We wouldn't just sit around and wait to die either, my friends and I would be the ultimate survival machines that sought out to unite the few remaining humans and form a resistance to rid the world of any remaining zombies.
This future is quite different than the one that Philip K. Dick came up with.  In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep there are definitely no zombies.  There are, however, androids that sometimes attack humans so it is kind of similar.  Also, even though there are a lot of humans left, there are very few left on Earth just like there are few humans left in the future I have imagined.

3.)
In this scene in Blade Runner the  costumes, and dialogue play a large part.  The costumes almost make you already start to believe that Rachael is an android.  Deckard is wearing normal clothes that any guy would wear on a daily basis. Likewise, Dr. Tyrell is wearing clothes that look very familiar to today's wardrobe. Rachel on the other hand is wearing something that looks odd and almost fake.  Just as her clothing looks fake, she too is in fact a fake (an android).  The costumes may not be enough to make you think she is an android but that along with the dialogue makes her an unmistakable android.  During the entire scene, the tone of her voice does not change once in the entire scene.  Deckard's and Tyrell's voice changes and expresses emotion with what they say but Rachael's remains cold and monotone just like that of a robot.  Along with the costumes and dialogue, the lighting seems to play a part as well.  Although I am not quite sure what that part is, it is clear that the dim lighting along with the bright sun outside is meant to play some role in this scene.

4.)
In the last scene, the dialogue, sound, and music are made to make the audience start to feel sympathy for the androids.  The dialogue is sad and the sounds of the rain hitting the ground mixed with the music change the audiences thoughts about the androids.  Up to this point they were thought of as villians but now all the chaos is over and there is peace.  There are no loud, alarming noises, just the soft pitter patter of rain and the light sound of the music in the background.  This along with Roy's sad thoughts of being forgotten make the reader think of Roy as human instead of inhuman/android.  And just like the audience, Deckard starts to feel empathy for the android now as well.  The line that says Roys memories will be lost like tears in rain makes Deckard realize that there is value in the life of an android and they play their own role in the world just like every other living thing.

5.)
Rick Deckard's future in Blade Runner does not look to pretty.  Although he is with the one he loves, he will be hunted by other blade runners due to the fact that Rachael is an illegal android.  He will have to spend the the rest of his life running from the law.  He will not be able to live a normal life because not only will he constantly be on the run, but he is also in love with an android.  As everyone in the story knows, androids have a short life expectancy.  He will never have time to spend with Rachael because they are always in danger and then, before he knows it, she will expire and die.  Even after she is dead, he will most likely have to continue running from the police due to the fact that he aided an illegal android and there will most likely be a warrant for his arrest.  By this point, he would have traded his entire life for a few years with someone he hardly got to spend quality time with. This sounds like an absolutely terrible life to lead.

6.)
So far, my researching is going fairly well.  I am finding a lot of information about the downsides to text messaging when dealing with one's social life, education, and safety. I have also found a little about the benefits of texting.  The question I am posing is whether or not using text messaging is a good or a bad thing.  So far, many of my sources lead to it being a bad thing.  I have found that texting can greatly increase the chance of a fatal accident while driving, cause formal writing skills to lessen, and cause less desire for face to face relationships.  The only problem is that I have not found many options for solutions.  There is the obvious choice of getting rid of texting altogether but a more reasonable way of solving this problem might be to limit texting to a certain amount rather than just having unlimited.

My Blade Runner Book and Movie Paper

    I don’t really know what it was about this paper but I definitely did not like writing it at all.  I thought it was much harder than the last paper I wrote and I enjoyed the last paper much more.  Typing the content was not actually hard.  Once I knew what I was going to write about I could easily start writing.  The only problem was that I had a very hard time figuring out what I should write.  I’m not sure if I just did not get the concept of what we were suppose to do or what but I had a very difficult time knowing what I should do.  I worked on this essay every day and for at least an hour a day I would sit in front of my computer and have nothing to show for it.  I spent hours brainstorming but I could not think of anything to put on paper.  As soon as I would start writing one thing, my words would somehow develop themselves into a different idea and I would have to start all over again.  This was very frustrating considering I spent a lot of time reading the book and I feel like my overall knowledge of the book was not expressed at all in this essay.
    As for strengths and weaknesses, I’m not quite sure what mine are.  Everything I thought I was good at was questioned with this paper.  I thought I was good with things like structure and thesis statements but now I’m not so sure.  I had a lot of trouble coming up with a thesis for this paper and I also do not know if my structure is right or not. I do believe that the peer reviews were somewhat helpful with this because it gives an opportunity for someone else to look at my paper rather than just me. Sometimes others see things that I do not so I am glad there was someone else reading my paper as I was writing it.  I’m not really sure about weaknesses either but I feel like this entire paper was just one big weakness.  I hope to develop my ideas a lot sooner/easier for the next assignment.

Objectified

I thought that the whole movie itself was pretty interesting. There were a few things in this documentary that really stood out to me because I had never thought of them before.  The first thing was the fact that everything is designed.  It is obvious that certain complex objects had to be designed but I never really put much thought into the smaller simpler objects.  The movie uses the potato peeler as an example of a simple object that needed to be designed.  I never looked at a potato peeler and appreciated the hard work and long process that others took in order to design it.  Another interesting point was if we are in an advanced age of technology, why do we still rely on ancient designs for every day objects such as a chair?  The designer raised a very good point that we do not go from a laptop to go ride in a horse carriage use a laptop and sit in a chair that is not designed any differently than it was a hundred years ago?  Another good point was that we use materials that are meant to last a lifetime for an object that is only meant to last a few months?  I believe this is a very good point and we need to start designing objects that can easily be disposed of.

Farenheit 451

    This week at the Athena, I chose to watch Farenheit 451.  I chose this movie out of the three because the trailer for it looked the most interesting.  After watching this movie I am very glad that I chose this one over the other two.  Despite the few downsides such as poor special effects and some questionable acting (both of these due to the fact that it is a much older movie), the overall story and message of the movie was pretty good.
    The movie takes place in a futuristic setting in which firemen no longer put out fires.  Instead, they create them.  Books are now illegal and it is the firemen’s job to find any remaining books and burn them.  The books are illegal because they are believed to only cause trouble and make people unhappy.  Instead of reading books, everyone watches TV instead and refer to the television as part of the family.  The TV announcers are known as cousins.  Anyone caught with a book is arrested and in many cases, their house is burned down.  Despite these consequences, there are a still people who try to keep and hide books.
    The character of whom this entire movie is about is a fireman named Montag.  He starts off the movie believing that books are no good and they must be burned.  It is not until one of the girls in his neighborhood starts talking to him that he starts to question whether or not he is doing the right thing by burning books.  As the story progresses, Montag is found stealing books that he is told to burn and reading them on his own.  The firemen find out and Montag is about to be arrested when he kills his superior and runs.  He flees for his life and finds a hidden society of people who devote their lives to memorizing a book so they may one day do good with the information they have.  Montag finds that the girl in his neighborhood (the one that made him question himself) is also part of this society and he too decides to devote his life to a book.  The movie ends peacefully with Montag walking through the forrest working on memorizing on of the books he stole rather than burned.

The end of Blade Runner

The worst part in the movie Blade Runner would definitely have to be the end.  It was very confusing and kind of went against everything that had already happened in the movie.  Roy is evil throughout the whole movie and then at the end, after going completely crazy, he turns good?  And where did Gaff come from? Was he just standing around the whole time watching Deckard fight or did he just conveniently show up after all the action was over?  From my point of view, the end was very confusing and all the weird freaky scenes at the end only made the confusion worse.  A good movie should leave the audience awed and amazed , not leave the audience confused and wondering what the heck just happened.

My Latest Video Creation

Just finished making this parody horror trailer of the youtube clip Charlie Bit My Finger.

Charlie Bit My Finger... and My Soul

Climax of Do Anderoids Dream

After reading the book, I was a little bit disappointed with the climax.  I expected there to be more fighting and more action in the climax.  During the entire book, Rick and others talk about how impossible killing six Nexus 6 androids in one day will be but yet it doesn't seem like it was that hard.  If Roy was suppose to be a criminal mastermind then why did he die in the matter of a page or two? And what happened to the alarm  that Roy set up that was suppose to make rick panic? I feel like what could have been a very epic fight scene, was instead an epic fail.
However, one thing I did like about the climax was how it involved Mercer and the spider.  Although I still have some unanswered questions about Mercer, many of them were answered.  The way the author wrote the scene with the spider and Mercer at the same time added to the overall feel of the story and I like how it kind of brought everything crashing down at once.  This entire scene made me feel strong emotions yet I am not sure what emotions  they were exactly.  I did however know one thing, the author did a very good job at making the reader feel as if they are part of the book while this scene is taking place.

Do Androids Dream blog2

So far I have read up to chapter 17 in the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and I'd have to say that the most interesting scene so far would be the scene where Rick is taken by the false police officer to Garland's office.  During this entire scene, the book left me wondering whether Rick was who he said he was, an android with an artificial memory, or just mentally crazy.  For a few pages I was actually convinced that the whole beginning of the book was all part of Rick Deckard's imagination.  Even after the scene was over and I knew that Rick was human, I still questioned whether or not he was indeed human.  This by far is my favorite part of the book so far because it kept my interest the whole way through. I was compelled to read more and more which for me is very rare.  I usually hate books and for the first time in a very long time I actually really enjoyed reading the material that was required for a class. 
After I was done reading, only one thing still confused me.  What or who is Mercer? I understand that he is like their god but what exactly is he? Is he human, is he and android, or does he even exist? Does he have an actual role in the story or is it just some random little detail to make the story sound more futuristic? There are so many aspects to Mercer that I find very confusing.

Chapter 11 in Allyn and Bacon: Writing as a Problem-Solving Process

There are two thing that caught my attention in chapter 11 of Allyn and Bacon.  The first is when it was talking about expert writers and how they use multiple drafts.  This section is talking about how expert writers still need to make multiple drafts and make many revisions.  The book says that "decades of research on the writing process of experts reveals how extensively experts revise."(p273).  This made me realize how important it is for a non-expert writer, such as myself, to revise, revise, revise.  If people who are considered experts on writing still need to make multiple drafts and revisions then that means I need to work a lot harder at making more revisions of my own work.
The second thing that caught my attention was the section on globally and locally revising.  Revising locally means you make changes that only effect a small portion of your writing like a sentence or two whereas globally revising means making changes that will cause you to make changes to other parts in your writing. I had never heard these terms before.  After reading this I realized that when I make revisions to my papers, I need to know if the revisions made are local or global.  By doing this I will know if my changes effect the rest of my paper and if so, I will have to change what needs to be changed. Knowing the difference between these to types of revisions will help me make sure I don't have parts of my writing that contradicts other parts or say completely different things.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Ever since I started reading Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, I find the fact that the characters are obsessed with animals to be kind of odd.  During the first chapter wen Rick Deckard was thinking about his electric sheep and going up on the roof where the animals are kept I thought that this would just be a small part of the story.  After I went on to read the next 3 chapters I found out that I was wrong.  Rick has this major obsession with animals and all he thinks about is getting a real animal. And it's not just Rick that seems to be fond of them, pretty much the entire human population left on Earth has an obsession with animals.  I find it weird that they have a monthly catalog just dealing with animal sales.  This may not seem strange to some of you but the prices for these animals are ridiculous.  People spend thousands and thousands of dollars just to get the best, or rarest pet on the market.  Rick's entire happiness practically depends on him getting a new animal.  The fact that he is practically depressed just because he has an electrical sheep instead of a real one is ridiculous if you ask me. And when Rick goes to the Rosen building and see's the animals, especially the owl, he acts like a two year old at a zoo.  I understand that it a person would be awe-struck if they saw an animal that they thought was extinct but I just find this whole obsession with animals both weird and interesting. Although i have a basic knowledge of why they are obsessed with animals, I hope to further understand it as i read on.

Allyn & Bacon Summary 1-3

I was assigned to read the first 3 chapters in a book titled The Allyn & Bacon Guide To Writing.  As you can imagine by the exciting title, this book is not exactly something I would read in my spare time.  Despite the fact that I had difficulty keeping my eyes open while reading, I did manage to learn a thing or two that will hopefully help me with my future papers I will have to write.  Apart from the basics of writing, and all that boring stuff, there were a few things that stood out to me.  The first of which was a quote that can be found on page 5 of the book. The quote read said that good writers are "question askers and problem posers."  This concept really stood out because I always thought of writing as a way of answering questions or solving problems.  After thinking about this statement I realized that every good writing I have read left me wondering.  I think that the idea of leaving the reader intrigued and wondering is something that I would much like to accomplish in my own works of writings. This is something that I probably need a lot of work on but I feel like it is definitely necessary in every piece of good writing so I need to focus on doing so.  The book then goes on to talk about developing a good thesis statement which I know sounds like loads of fun but despite how I felt about reading the text, I again read something that stood out to me.  "An essay's thesis statement is actually the writer's answer to the writer's question."(p12)  This is something I had never thought of before and something that I, and everyone writing a paper, should keep in mind when writing.  Other than the whole question posing idea the main thing I feel I need to keep in mind when writing is purpose. I need to think hard about what I am trying to say and how I can best express that without being confusing.  Thinking about the audience, genre, and angle of vision (the books words for point of view) are also important but  I feel confident that if I can pose a good question or two and really focus on my purpose then my writing will greatly improve. Hopefully you as a reader will see the changes in my writing as well.

This blog is a result of my signing up for English 151.  This is my first time blogging but seeing as how I am now enrolled in the class and this blog is mandatory, i can no longer go without writing a blog.  The class is focused on reading and writing about science fiction situations dealing with apocalypses and technology.  I am exposed to technology every day with my computer, xbox, tv, phone, ect.. The fact is that technology is almost literally everywhere in my life and in the modern world there is absolutely nothing that can be done to get rid of technology due to the fact that we all rely on it daily.  That is why i think an apocalypse caused by technology is both a very interesting and realistic topic of science fiction to both read and write about. Although in the past i have not been a fan of reading or done much reading other than the books i was assigned to read in class. However, science fiction is one of my favorite genres in book to read so i am actually starting to look forward to the class. In the past i have not done much creative writing or free writing at all. 99% of all the writing done in my high school career were all book reports and research projects.  Although I'm not a fan of writing, the idea of writing about science fiction is something that i am looking forward to in the class.