Story Line

I recently watched a video on youtube about a cat sanctuary known as Caboodle ranch. Founded by Craig Grant in 2003, Caboodle Ranch is a 30 acre non-profit cat rescue society that saves stray and unwanted cats. At the ranch, located at Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, cats get to roam freely without fear. The 500+ cats that Grant has saved have all been neutered or spayed and all of them are taken regularly to the vet for checkups.

As a cat lover, I was amazed to hear a story like this. You rarely ever see an individual who will give up everything, including his life savings, to save his furry friends. When I was young, I would always say, “When I’m rich, I’m going to donate my money to create a big, no-kill animal shelter.” But seeing Grant, I am a little bit ashamed. I love animals, I hate seeing them hurt, and my family and I rescue strays frequently. But here is a man whose actions are larger than what I have ever aspired to do. Now, watching the video and reading his blog, I see that I haven’t done enough to help animals. Now, I like to say instead, “When I have more money, I’m going to donate it to support Grant’s altruistic cause.

For all of you reading this, please help Caboodle Ranch by donating your time and money. If you’re ever down at Florida, remember to visit the ranch. I’m sure you will see your money put to good use.

Calvary\’s Mission – \”For the Working Poor\”I recently wrote an article about a food pantry in queens this blog is more of an update and a visual of the impact a small local church has on its community.To clarify it is something that is personally important to me, because my father is one of the co founders of this organization. It has deeply affected myself and my family’s relationship, because of the sacrifice volunteering entails. With all the changes this financial recession brings, many of Americans are challenged with providing for their families. Calvary’s Mission is a helping hand to those people in Queens in need of groceries that can no longer provide for themselves despite the circumstances. The young,sick,elderly,handicapped,hungry and desperate are all being fed at this local food pantry. On average about 1000 families line up on Saturday mornings as early as 5am to receive food at 10am , when the lines are open.
The organization works alongside Food Bank and City Harvest to help service the people. Besides locally, this past Thanksgiving season Tony Singh and Pastor Kemraj Singh made their 2nd annual trip to the interior parts of Guyana in South American to bring food and school supplies for children living in remote parts of the country. As a result of their success and the aid Calvary’s Mission provides for their community they recently received the proceeds from a charity event held on December 5th. This organization raises funds for non profit organizations, like Calvary’s Mission and chooses a honorary foundation each year.Calvary’s Mission food pantry has even gained attention from Elizabeth Crowley city council of the 30th district in Queens and commended the volunteers for their service to the community. I definitely said enough watch the video and see for yourselves.

Calvary\’s Mission – \”For the Working Poor\”

Can someone please comment and show me show to indent? I am pressing tab and it’s taking me to another window.

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A student in my Journalism 3050 class asked how they could go about attracting an audience to comment on their blog material. I run my own website and I’ve found that to attract attention you will need a lot of promotion, not just from yourself but word of mouth. A lot of online social networks like Facebook and Twitter are helpful when it comes to promotion. It provides the direct link to everyone you are connected to on these sites. Targeting the right audience is also a big factor because you want people to care for what you are blogging about. If they are interested then your blog may strike a nerve and they’ll comment.

With my site, I get a lot of views but no comments because in order to comment people would have to join the website. I understand that for some that may seem like a task so it does not bother me much. For this issue Google has Google Analysis that keeps track of views on websites and how long someone viewed the page.  I find myself looking at other websites, major ones, that deal with the music industry and see what they comments are like and I’ve found out that many of them are lacking audience participation as well even with their consistent posts and developed brands backing them.

I strongly believe in the theory “if you build it, they will come.” Make sure your blog is something you strongly believe in. Even if it is taking off at a slow rate, if you maintain and promote it, an audience will eventually come.

Here are some tips from my experience. Hopefully this can help:

+ Build a blog

+ Get a twitter for the blog

+ Target your audience

+Build a following

+Maintain relationships with audience (Speak to them regularly and network)

+Keep up with blog post, you don’t want your following to lose interest

If anything else comes to mind I will edit and update this.

The long awaited winter break is only a week away. Once finals week is over we can say good riddance to the odd shaped building that is the vertical campus (The egg shaped haven where we learn everything necessary for the “real world”). I am looking forward to getting some art work done. I have made a list of everything I want to do. Design this, build that, visit this place. In the end I know I won’t leave my house for anything. I’ll stash a bunch of food into my fridge and hibernate. The list will sit in the corner of my desk collecting cobwebs. We all start off this mini break so ambitious and in the end we don’t do anything. I find it better when things go unplanned. Those little surprises of how amazing the day was makes me all giddy inside instead of being disappointed by what I didn’t do. So all I’m saying is don’t be disappointed by what you didn’t get done. Instead look at everything you accomplished and come back for another round of a “well rounded education” in the spring.

I went to go see Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire on Thanksgiving Day and it was definitely a an eye opener. The story-line was based on a true story, and the fact that an actual human being had to experience all of what Precious went through is heart breaking and embarrassing.

It definitely shed light on how the government let’s things slip by. They trust whatever someone tells them and show no interest in investigating. Their evaluations rely on the simple glance of one of their careless workers when deep down there may be serious issues affecting the children or family.

The movie reminded me of city workers and how rude they are. They’re hired to work in city agencies to help the individuals and families that go there for assistance but instead what you find are rude, miserable people that could careless about your situation or how long you’ve been waiting. It’s disheartening for people who are interested in social work or public affairs, eager to make a difference.. unfortunately, it’s going to take a lot more than a couple of eager graduates to break through the bureaucracy overpowering our city’s government.

If you have feelings, [men don’t be afraid to shed a tear] you’ll find it hard to avoid sharing the mixed emotions of pain, anger and disappointment that Precious experiences throughout the movie. The ending is bitter-sweet and will send you home with teary eyes and a smile but you can be nothing but proud of Precious for her ability to overcome so much at such a young age.

It was a great movie and from what I hear a great read, I recommend everyone to go watch it !

[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/krQiRIUSZs0" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Being gay is becoming more acceptable in our society. So why is it more likely that a white male will come out with his sexuality than a black male will? There are stigmas in the black culture against gay people, but why? I actually worked on this topic as a group project a couple of years ago where we had to make a documentary on the subject. The documentary was titled “Young Black and Gay.” I’m very interested to hear what everyone thinks about this.

The Tiger Woods “scandal” is the most recent and perhaps extreme example of a huge problem I have with contemporary media. Not just the celebrity gossip news in general, but the fact that it achieves such widespread consumption as well. First of all, most negative stereotypes of journalists today are probably perpetuated primarily by paparazzi, slavering gossip-hounds and their ilk. Second of all, the fact that someone has been in a movie, has published a few albums or is really good at golf does not make them any better than me. I’m not sure why I should care about how the personal relationships of people I’ve never met at the other end of the US play out if I have a perfectly normal social life to participate in right here.

The stubborn, determined violation of privacy and the mindless, un-critical consumption of the slop thereby produced is a self-perpetuating cycle which boxes actual news out of the public eye. The average working individual has only so much time to devote to the news, so it’s a shame that so many people seem to spend it reading about a golfer’s nightlife. Perhaps the news industry is resting on its laurels and failing to underscore what truly ought to be important to people in a relatively free society. This, of course, is totally unproductive of me to say, because as of yet I have no concrete idea for an alternative.

As someone who has worked in three different retail stores over the past four Black Fridays, I think it’s safe to say that I’ve seen all sides of human nature.  More specifically, all sides of human nature when confronted with heavily discounted merchandise.  

I have woken up at 3 am in order to open the store to a herd of (mostly) middle-aged women.  After hearing about the deaths following last year’s Black Friday, I am counting my blessings that I have never been the worker to physically open the doors to welcome the stampede. 

I have stayed awake until 3 am in order to close the store after the group has dispersed.  I remember this shift, when we all stood at the front of the store for about five minutes and just looked at the pure destruction that had been left in front of us.  I’m sure you can all come up with some ideas for what we were thinking at that time. 

I have been dubbed a bitch by a man after informing him the digital camera he was seeking had just been sold out.

But this year, I started my new part-time scut work at a clothing store in my neighborhood ON Black Friday.  Don’t even ask me how it worked out that way.  After suffering through two back-to-back 11-hour shifts, I have come to the conclusion that true human nature…is to be as absolutely disgusting as possible when you know you don’t have to account for it.

What is it about a neatly folded table of sweaters that turns normally docile females into the human embodiment of a tornado?  I would be working double-time, trying to keep up the order of this one – ONE – table I was assigned to, and the second I would turn my back, they would attack.  As much as I looked forward to breaktime, I almost dreaded it just as much, knowing the work that would be awaiting me after leaving the table unmanned for however long my break was.  It looked like the women picked up a sweater, thought, “Oh, this isn’t my size,” and literally slingshotted it across the store.

After four years of picking up after people who seem to lose all sort of hygenic decency after walking into a retail store, I am confident that I will NEVER become one of those women.  If anything good has come out of this unintentionally degrading work, it’s that.

If you think that the scariest villain in the movie theaters is Freddy Krueger or the little girl with long black hair from The Ring,you are wrong. The most frightening villain is hidden in an innocent popcorn combo, according to this week’s research.

The terrifying results of the laboratory analysis of popcorn sold in some of the largest and most popular movie theaters in the country, particularly for people that consumed it as a healthy snack.

The nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) explains that a medium popcorn and soda combo at Regal, the country’s biggest movie theater chain, contain 1,610 calories and 60 grams—of saturated fat. That’s like eating six scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese, four bacon strips, and four sausages.

At the AMC, the second biggest movie theater chain, the large popcorn contains 1.030 calories and 57 gram- of saturated fat. It’s like eating a pound of baby back ribs topped with a scoop of Häagen-Dazs ice cream.

The CSPI pointed out that popcorn sold at Regal and AMC has more calories than they claim to have. “Regal and AMC are our nominees for Best Supporting Actor in the Obesity Epidemic,” said CSPI senior nutritionist Jayne Hurley. “Who expects about 1,500 calories and three days’ worth of heart-stopping fat in a popcorn and soda combo? That’s the saturated fat of a stick of butter and the calories of two sticks of butter. You might think you’re getting Bambi, but you’re really getting Godzilla.”

The analysis shows that the high quantity of fat and calories is caused by the coconut oil used to cook the corn. According to the CSPI, if the popcorn was cooked with healthier oils such as canola, it would have fewer calories but more sodium.

I am artistically frustrated. From the looks of this blog, we all are. We need to write, take photographs, listen to good music and play soccer to feel like we live an enriched and satisfying life. Presumably most of the people in our class are writing majors or at least have a sliver of an interest in writing. So I am proposing to you a plan: you express yourself, I relieve my artistic frustration. For years two of my best friends, one a writer and one an amazing painter, and I have discussed making a zine. I myself already have a blog The Body Attacks Itself which features poems, stories, photos, etc. and I have decided that this winter break I am going to extend my blog into a physical in-print zine. It will be The Body Attacks Itself In Print, to say. For those of you who don’t know what a zine is, it is defined by Webster’s Online as n. 1. An inexpensively produced, self-published, underground publication. Basically, I am going to collect short (very short, ideally less than 300 words) stories, poems, anecdotes, poems, etc. to compile and distribute guerrilla-style around the city and the places I go. The idea is to create a collaboration of writings and such without bounds, grades or limits. It is sort of like a homemade Encounters.
If you want to contribute or help, I would be thrilled to the highest mountain and beyond. Truly I am open to all contributions and want to get the ball rolling here. Consider it!:)