I chose this particular picture because it goes along with my assignment 9. About how Hamlet, in my opinion, can be based on romance. This picture is supposed to be Hamlet holding Ophelia. Hamlet realizes that he truely does love Ophelia when she dies. What a perfect time to realize something like that… ha.

I am pretty sure my family doesn’t have any superstitions about ghosts or anything like that. But I could be wrong. Even though I don’t really believe in ghosts, I feel like I’m surrounded by one all the time at home. Shortly after we moved into my house, I found out accidentally that the husband that lived in the house before us, died in there. But the only kind of good thing about it is that it was the preacher that used to preach where i went to church at the time. But it’s still kind of creepy to think about a ghost being there. I feel like he watches over me. I don’t like being there by myself for long periods of time though. Even though he was a preacher, he’s still like a spirit type thing. I don’t want to believe it but it’s hard not to. It could just be my imagination. Hearing all of the creaks and abnormal sounds of an older house…. it gets scary.

I looked at a website about Elizabethan time ghosts and it says that Anna Boleyn now haunts the house she once lived in. I believe she has not gone to rest because she wanted to get revenge on her mudering husband, Henry VIII.

       On her way to Emerald City, she meets this scarecrow. He doesn’t have a brain…obviously. I believe this brainless scarecrow represents Dorthy’s stupidity for running away and being so selfish. During the whole beginning, all she talks about is how unhappy she is. While all of her family and friends are working their butts off so they get money to please her! Moving on…

       The tin man is up next and he doesn’t have a heart. Totally hollow inside…imagine that. Well this can relate to Dorthy also. Like I said before, she was acting kind of selfish in the beginning. Maybe she doesn’t really know what she wants or where her heart is in life. She ran away because she didn’t think anyone listened to her. But in reality, all that they did was for her. She just didn’t see that.

       My favorite, the cowardly lion! Now as everyone knows, lions are king of the jungle…or forest..whichever story tale you’re in. And this particular lion didn’t have enough courage to stand up to a piece of meat! Dorthy ran away but she was scared when she did. And she didn’t have enough courage to talk to her family about the way she felt. But that can definitely be a scary thing.

       Another one is the wicked witch of the west. That showed Dorthy’s evil side in this story. She ran away, she knew that would cause sadness in the family, and thats what she wanted. She wanted them to realize how much they needed her.

       At the end they get to Emerald City. Beautiful place! Who wouldn’t want to go there?! It was practiacally perfect, except for the wizard. He wasn’t as friendly as anyone would’ve thought him to be. Deceitful little town…. But I think the city represents what Dorthy sees her life to be. It looks like something anyone would want but then you get to the core of all of it and you find out that it’s not what anyone would want.

      Well that is what I thought about the allegories in The Wizard of Oz.

Not all of the self image media is bad. My mom reads Reader’s Digest and they have some Dove ads in their magazine. Well they have started using “normal” women to do their ads. Dove tells where they are from and what their occupation is and everything. This one woman was a teacher… but I don’t think I’d want to be in an underwear ad if I was a teacher. Ha ha. But at least they weren’t looking for the typical paper thin models. It’s actually nice to see that some people like real. And if you see behind the scene stuff, you’ll see that the people doing the photographing or just are apart of everything don’t even look like those models! Yet they still push people to look like that. They need to look in the mirror and get a reality check.

Here is a website that I learned the most from. They have little “Did You Know?”‘s and stuff and I thought it was pretty interesting. Media Influence on Body & Beauty . It explains that not only women are influenced by looking good. Did you know that the difference between what the average woman and the average model weighed twenty years ago was just 8% & today it is 23%? How superficial is that? Majorly. Here are a few more interesting facts:

• The average women wears a size 10 and the average model wears a size 2.
• 80% of 10-year-old girls have been on a diet.
• The diet industry was almost unknown thirty years ago.

Just goes to show how much people are pressured into looking like what they see on television and in magazines. And the worst part about it is that the majority of what they see is fake. People are killing themselves to achieve the unreal. And to me, that’s unreal. Even fitness magazines urge you to “look hot”. They don’t really want you to be healthy! Who cares about that? I mean, it’s not like puking up your food will hurt you or anything!! (yeah right). Society is just so desperate for love, affection, and attention that they forget about what is really important. Well, it is important to be healthy but what I’m saying is that all we hear about is “guys won’t date you if you’re a cow”. That’s the reason so many girls thrive to be sticks. It’s what their taught and it’s just completely ridiculous.

Alright well I think I’m getting way too into this! haha. So I’m going to stop there. Most of this is opinion but I did get some of those things from that website I have up there. That’s really cool how to do that by the way. I’m glad I know how to do that now!

    Although, some people pushed love aside when it came to different “class members”. People of different wealth or society. But those who were really in love didn’t care what anyone thought! People are still like that today in a lot of ways. Popularity, wealth, social values are just so important. It’s ridiculous that people are like that. Thinking that they are any better than the rest of us. But I guess it’s just a way of life and some people are born into it. They don’t really have a choice or chance to get out.

haha. i guess i have nothing else to do.

& i really enjoy doing these things on the computer.

its pretty awesome if i do say so myself.

mmkay well i guess im going to go try to find something useful to do.

or maybe just something else to do, not necissarily useful.

haha.

peace. <3

      Sir Francis Bacon was born at York House on the Strand in London. He was the youngest of five sons. Having not been very healthy, Bacon was given college tuition by John Washall, a graduate from Oxford. Most of his teachings were taught in Latin and followed a medieval curriculum.

      Bacon’s goals were to discover truth, to serve his country, and to serve his church. In 1580 he applied for a post at court but failed. So he worked for two year at Gray’s Inn studying law, until he was admitted in 1582 as an outer barrister.

      Parliamentary Committee charged Francis Bacon with twenty-three counts of corruption after he went into some serious debt. He confessed to all of them but people still argue that he was forced to confess to save King James from a political scandel. So he ended his career in disgrace and was now incapable of holding future office or sitting in parliament.

      Even though Bacon was having some seriously bad luck, he did however have a couple of ladies in his life. The first women to enter the picture was Elizabeth Hatton. She was a twenty year old widow and she loved money! Bacon was only thirty-six at this time and was still having debt issues. They were engaged but it was reported that she broke off the engagement and left Bacon for a wealthier man. But that’s just a brush off his shoulder. Some years later at the age of forty-five, Bacon married Alice Barnham, a fourteen year old daughter of a well-known London alderman and M.P. But soon, she too became greedy and started an affair with John Underhill. Bacon found out about this romantic relationship and took her out of his will. Little did she know that he had a very generous sum of goods to give her. Many believe that Bacon was either bisexual or homosexual. No one can really prove it but that’s what some authors of books say.

      Francis Bacon’s life came to an end on April 9, 1626. It was said that he was traveling to Highgate through the snow with the King’s physician. He suddenly came up with the idea of preserving meat in snow so they went to a lady’s house and got a fowl. He stuffed it with snow and happened to catch pneumonia. He thought that he had caught the illness from the fowl so he ate it to try to save his life. Of course it didn’t work, so he went to Highgate and was given a damp bed that had never been slept in. The bed was so cold that it just made everything worse. Mr. Hobbes said he died of suffication.

The Renaissance Man

     I think a good renaissance man would be Mohandas Karamchand Ghandi. He was born in in 1869 and died of assaination in 1948 at the age of 78. Ghandi was a very inspirational man who worked and did what ever he could to get his point of “peace” through to people. He went on long fasts for both self-purification and social protest. And all he wanted was for people to get along with each other. He led nationwide campaigns for expanding women’s rights, easing poverty, building religious and ethnic amity, but what he really wanted to accomplish was acheiving Swaraj. Swaraj is the independence of India from foreign domination. Ghandi wanted non-violence and truth and he tried to influence people to support him and do the same. He was a good man and died doing what he was meant to do, died of a good cause, killed for speaking the truth.

im really excited about this class assignment because ive never done a blog for a class before.

this is super neat! i cant wait till we get comments and such.

i think this will really work out great cause its so new and totally sweet!

plus, my generation spends the majority of their time on the computer anyways.

im just so excited! yayyy!