3 Doors Down Video

Favorite Music

I tend to listen to almost any kind of music. Typically, it does not matter what genre of music a song is; if I like it, I'll listen to it. Most of the time I do not know the name of the artist, but I'll like the song. While I enjoy listening to pretty much anything my usual defaults are the radio station 96.3 or more modern country. I like harder rock too but that is the category that half of the time I don't know who I am listening to. I hate Christmas music--before Thanksgiving. One of my favorite bands is Nickelback because the lead singer has good vocals, and I like their style. They have the versatility to do softer and harder rock. I really like the country artists Jason Aldean and Big & Rich too. They have a country with rock flair sound.

Anthony Acevedo

The story of Anthony Acevedo is greatly related to speaking the unspeakable. After his term in the sub-camp of Buchenwald during World War II, he had to sign a document saying that he would not talk about what had happened. Basically, what happened never happened. If he said anything about it to anyone, Acevedo would be liable for disciplinary action. He obeyed his orders until recent years. Acevedo has started giving speeches about what he went through in the concentration camp. It is important that he did talk about his experiences and the atrocities of the concentration camps because it is something important in history that cannot be ignored.

Genocide in Darfur

The Sudanese government puts on a murderous campaign, trying to eliminate the African tribes in the reason. Arab militias attack whole villages at once. The victims are mutilated by removal of eyes and ears and the smashing of faces. The villages are burned to the ground. The men are castrated and left to die, and the women are gang raped leaving them ostracized from the community and often with unwanted pregnancies. The people cannot venture out of their safe-havens for fear of being attacked or shot. Those reporting on the situation in Darfur make a valient effort to speak of the horror. Speaking of genocides like this one is important because if they are kept hidden away from the rest of the world, nothing can be done to stop the causes of them. At the very least, work can be done to prevent them in the future.

After Maus

I think that the author of Maus used mice to represent the victims of the Holocaust because his father used the term playing cat and mouse to refer to the Nazis and the Jews. Mice are small creatures that can be killed in large amounts and really have no way of defending themselves. I liked the comic format of Maus because it enables you to see what the author wants you to see and gets the message across the way that the author wanted. There is almost no room for intrepretation. It is what it is.

Reading Maus reinforced my opinion of art as a way to convey a message or meaning. I feel that while art is a good medium for relaying messages to the population, it does not have the obligation to function in this manner. There are art pieces that are just for looking at. I call these doctor's office paintings--the kind that are put their to give the eye something to do. However, even these could have the purpose of stirring up the thoughts and memories of the viewer. I do not think that art has any obligations and neither do the artists that create the art. Sometimes art is created for the release of feelings and, not unlike Emily Dickinson's poems, is not made with the intention of it being seen.

Theo Jansen and Art

Theo Jansen is a painter and kinetic sculptor. He has made animal sculptures out of tubing, lemonade bottles, and plastic ties. Theo calls his creations "Animari" and they have a truly unique feature about them--they come alive in the wind. The Animari have large feathers on their back that enables them to catch the wind and makes their legs move. I think that his sculptures are really cool because they are living art. Animari can detect when they are close to water or loose sand and start moving in the opposite direction. One thing that I find fascinating about the sculptures is that they can capture and store the wind in bottles to be used later when the wind does not blow. In essence, wind is their food source.

The purpose of art ranges depending on the artist. It is used to capture images of people, places, and things, but another important significance is that art gives life to the artist's imagination. Through art, the artist can show the extensions of their imagination or how he or she sees the world. It is as if the mind is opened for all to see. It is the same freedom of expression and imagination that is seen in the writings of poets and authors. With the right flow and compositions of colors you can convey a message of feeling. The first piece of abstract art that I ever understood was painted in watercolor by my great-uncle. It has a lot of deep hued colors mostly in pinks, reds, blues, and purples, all blending together at some point in the painting. Somewhere off center are melted black figures that are almost indistinguishable. My grandfather said that this was a picture of a man and a woman dancing. Almost instantly, I had that "aha" moment about the painting and the figures. Being a dancer myself I could see that, through the use of those colors and the sort of melted composition, the painting illustrated how it feels to dance. That was what it meant to me, but someone else might see something different. That is the real purpose of art, creating an emotional response in the viewer.

Feelings about the results of the election

I find it hard to have any specific feelings about the results of the election because politics is not something that I have a very good handle on understanding. My reasoning behind who to vote for was largely based on those candidates for office that were pro-life. I do not know whose economic plan would best suit the country, and I have no ill feelings about having an African American president. I just hope that they who were chosen for the offices in government are the best people for the job. However, I am not happy about the passing of proposal 2. I contribute the passing of this proposal to a lot of advertisements that stretched the truth and played on peoples sympathies. In most of the ads in favor of this proposal conveniently left out the word "embryonic" from the term stem cell research, lumping it into the category with adult stem cell research which does not harm or cause the loss of life. Embryonic stem cell research has so far done nothing for the medical profession while adult stem cell research has led to the cure to many diseases.