Okay, who created daylight savings time please raise your hand

That would be George Vernon Hudson, of London, England. This  man right here:

I don't believe he actually had horns, but he very well might have. 

This wonderful man created the mostly useless event known as daylight savings time. He created this due to his love of collecting insects. Legit. He needed daylight hours to do so, and that led to him proposing the semi-annual hour change. 

I get that sunlight is good. And sure, it's nice in the fall to gain an hour of sleep. But in spring, the "spring forward" part of DST, IT SUCKS.

I do not appreciate losing a precious hour of sleep, simply so a man in the 1900's could gather more insects.

Iceland, Russia, and Belarus have even switched to "permanent daylight savings time," meaning they're forever on the summertime hours. See, what's the problem with that? 

I don's see any problem with it getting brighter later or earlier. I like night and I like day. In fact, I find that DST is sometimes quite bad. Often times, people forget to set their clocks back or forward. They might then be late to work, school, or an appointment. 

Maybe it's a government conspiracy. Maybe it's the communists. Maybe it's the Greek/Roman gods and goddesses' way of fixing someone's mess up. 

Nonetheless, I despise it. I'm tired. I feel icky. I was just fine yesterday, thankyouverymuch.

I think we should boycott it. You with me? Good sounds like a plan. We'll start an organization. You can be in charge of snacks.      

Make love, not war

As of lately, North Korea has been in the media spotlight. Certainly not for good reasons, but it's hard to tell what the situation is nowadays.

North Korea has a history of issuing threats of attack towards other countries. None have been followed through, no total destruction of any nations. So it's kind of become a "boy cries wolf" situation with North Korea. But this time is a little different.

On February 12th, North Korea performed its third nuclear test, despite U.N. resolutions forbidding them. And they are planning a test of a long range rocket that is potentially capable of carrying nuclear weapons in mid-April. With their recent rocket testing as well, these rockets have the potential to reach as far as Ottawa, Canada to Madrid, Spain. North Korea would have no problem successfully launching rockets into any part of South Korea. No rocket of that ability has been successfully launched, though it has been tried numerous times.

So what does this mean for us in the good old United States of America? It's hard to say. First we have to determine whether this is legitimate, or if it's simply another empty threat. March 7th, 2013, North Korea issued a threat saying, "Since the United States is about to ignite a nuclear war, we will be exercising our right to preemptive nuclear attack against the headquarters of the aggressor in order to protect our supreme interest," And while it's a little difficult to get the tone correct through translation, it seems as if North Korea is ready and willing to retaliate any aggressive actions. 

But no one really knows. There's a lot of speculation. Some think that the threats come from North Korea's desire to gain a peace treaty with the U.S., feeling as if they cannot be equals during talks unless they also have a powerful army. This could also be a desperate cry for attention, as the North is currently suffering from an extreme food shortage. There are even reports of parents eating their own children after going mad from hunger. North Korea is in a difficult place right now. At some point, the people will get sick of being denied the basic necessities, and something will go down. 
 
One thing is for certain. If North Korea takes any aggressive actions toward any nation, be it South Korea, or the United States, countries will jump into action. The U.N. is even getting sick of the North's crap. For now, it's just a matter of the waiting game.

"Choose a job you love...

... and you will never have to work a day in your life." That quote from Confucius embodies the American dream. We all want to be able to work, to earn money, and not hate ourselves and our lives. And having just recently gotten a job, I'm desperately hoping for this.

But sometimes, I wonder. Couldn't I just sit by the edge of the road, begging for money too? Sure, I wouldn't have a house, but I'm such an adorable little girl, wouldn't people just throw money at me? It wouldn't be that bad of a life. I could work on my tan, just sit around all day, and still make a living.

"Don't beggars make very little money, and that's why they have to beg?" you ask. Oh, silly, silly children. Living in my wonderful small-to-mid-sized city, we don't actually have real beggars. Believe me, we have homeless people, but they don't sit on street corners and beg. The people you see sitting on the corners, with their lovely signs telling you "God bless" are probably actually pretty well off. I mean, *cite source*

Think about the people you see sitting on the side of the road, asking for money. They are always holding a sign. It says something, sometimes heartbreaking, like their family is sick or something, Some will say that they've tried to find a job, but can't. Come on.

I'm not saying all people you see asking for money are damn liars, but the ones we most often see, especially in my city, are well off. Many even park their cars a ways away and walk to their corner. And I understand that the economy's bad, and finding a job might be difficult, but it's not that difficult. There are much more efficient ways to spend your time than sitting idly on a corner, waiting for money to be thrown at you. There are plany resources around the city that can help people gain employment. There are government groups along with many non-profit organizations out there whose goal is to help find employment and housing. It's not easy, and it's not always going to work out, but you have to be persistant.

I understand that I'm just a little girl who has never encountered a trouble in her life. But I just aquired a second job. Numero dos, hombre. They were practically handed to me. I went in for an interview, and within a few days, I got the job. I don't have special connections, I promise I didn't bribe anyone. I'm not going to be rolling in the dough, but I work part time. If someone worked full time, which they were also hiring for, they would make a whole lot more than I would. I would consider it safe to assume that someone could sustain themselves with a job like that. Sure, budgets might be tight, but whose aren't these days?

So as much fun as sitting on a corner, begging for money sounds, I think I'll stick to working. I don't think I have any cardboard anyway. 

I like the way you die, boy.

This weekend, I finally got to see the movie Django Unchained. You see, I went to the theater to see it a while ago, with my good friend. However, she happened to be a little sixteenyearold, so she couldn't see it, and being the good friend I am, I didn't abandon her and see it alone. 

But I got to see it this weekend, so all's good. 

And it was pretty good! I liked it well enough anyway. 

This movie centers around Django (the "D" is silent), a slave. Well, he was a slave in the first five or ten minutes of the movie. Then he's set free, and he joins a bounty hunter (white dude) as a term of his freedom. They do cool stuff for a while, killing people and all, and then Django goes to rescue his wife, from whom he was separated years ago. His bounty hunter friend tags along to help out. They have a fantastic adventure, involving Leonardo DiCaprio (omghe'ssohotandtotallynotold -Macy) as a slave owner. There're trials and tribulations and nothing goes quite right. But it was a good story and all. 

But of course, I have some complaints. Not really though. They're mostly observations that made me remark that the movie was "interesting" instead of just "good."

The first is the amount of fake blood they used. Oh. My. Goodness. It was like the Great Flood came again. I was looking for Noah and his ark the whole time. As there were a lot of deaths, you would expect a lot of blood. But the amount of blood per capita was ridiculous. Like a simple pistol shot would create a fountain. And don't even get me started on the shotgun shots. One of the scenes was in a house, and many people died. The amount of blood left on the walls was just absurd. I'm not sure if they meant to make it so outlandish, or what, but it was crazy. 

Then was the soundtrack. Each song on it's own, out of context, was good. Really cool sounding, you know. But it was weird selections. One song would be western-y, seeming to fit the situation. Then the next minute, you would hear rap selections. Quite interesting choices. 

It was overall a kind of silly movie. It had it's serious parts, but it also had a good amount of humor and lightheartedness put in in, which is always good in a movie, especially when it's about a subject such as this one. So in conclusion, I would encourage you to see Django Unchained. That is, if you're old enough. Good kids do not sneak into R rated movies.

It's a bird! It's a plane!

Continuing on the move-watching theme, I spent more of my time wasted watching some superhero movies. It's more the type of movies I like to watch, the action-y stuff. I had also just watched Snow White and the Huntsman, so I decided to go to another Chris Hemsworth movie, Thor. No, it totally wasn't because of his looks.

Anyway. The movie. It was fairly decent. I wasn't overly impressed by it, but I wasn't disappointed, I suppose. 

It starts out giving background information on the galaxy and our hero Thor and his friends and family. Then Thor gets sent to earth, and all hell breaks loose. And of course only our dear Thor can fix everything. That's essentially it. Oh and there's a girl. There's always a girl. 

Not bad, anyway. It kinda just seemed like they were trying to get a Thor movie out, so that they could include him in The Avengers and not have the general population confused about who he was and where he came from. That's not a bad thing, but the plot was incredibly generic and monotonous. 

So then from there, I moved on to the one of the other hero movies I should've seen a while ago. Iron Man 2. I had seen the first pretty near to when it came out. And it was good! So why not see the other one, right?

Iron Man 2 started out with Tony Stark, (AKA Iron Man for all those who don't remember characters' names or something,) essentially regressing back to how he was at the beginning of the first movie. And obviously there's a bad guy and Iron Man has to win and stuff. The usual. However, since Iron Man itself differs from the generic hero movie, it's different at the same time as being completely carbon copy. 

It bugged me though how the main character seemed to completely forget the personality change that happened in the previous movie. Stark returned to his hugely egoistic self, not caring for anyone but himself. And while at the end of the first movie he was still an extreme elitist, he still had "learned compassion for other people" or some crap like that. But it all seemed to disappear at the start of Iron Man 2. But it was an alright movie.

So, I guess superhero movies aren't really more than I expected. That might not bring the quality down, especially if they have an attractive star, but it's always nice to have a plot that I can't guess ten minutes into the movie. But we can't be too demanding, now can we?  

And they lived happily ever after...

This week, I've been watching a lot of movies. I don't know why. I really don't have time for it. But I've somehow made the time, (by not doing a lot of my homework coughcough.) I was watching some of the movies I'd wanted to see for a long time, but never got around to. 

The first one I watched that I'll talk about is Disney's Tangled. It's a different twist on the classic fairy tale of Rapunzel. And by different twist, I mean they changed essentially everything except for her long hair and the tower. But that is certainly not a bad thing.

We find out that this Rapunzel was a princess. But then, because of some magic flower that Rapunzel's mother ate when she was pregnant, Rapunzel's hair is magical. That flower was used by a witch, and when the King took it for the Queen, the witch was angered. So she stole Rapunzel to keep herself young and raised Rapunzel as her own. But of course Rapunzel wants out. So when a random man climbs through her window and can take her away, she grabs that chance. All she wants to do is see these lights that are flown into the sky each year on her birthday. 

Of course from there it turns into a fantastic adventure, with a battle between good and evil. And it was really good. I enjoyed going back to my childhood days of watching Disney princess movies. 

With this though, they started moving toward the more modern mindset. Rapunzel's goal was not to find love, but to discover herself. She just happened to find love at the same time. Rapunzel herself was very independent as well. While at times she did need her trusty "knight in shining armor," she could stand on her own, and often times was the one who saved the duo's day. 

Then, continuing on the Disney princess theme, I went and watched Brave. 

And I loved it just as much.

Brave follows the life of a Scottish princess who just wants to be herself. However, her mother wants to make her into the perfect lady, and this causes a rift between them. Because of this rift and differing opinions, a series of events take place that *possiblespoileralert?* turn our heroine Merida's mother into a bear. It sounds weird, but it makes sense in the movie. The rest of the movie is then about Merida trying to keep her mother from being hunted while also trying to turn her back into a human. 

It was really a heartwarming tale, again about a young woman trying to find herself essentially. This one did not end in a "happily-ever-after-with-a-guy," which was of course different from what I was used to with Disney princess movies. But it was still good.

Overall, this just made me excited for what's to come. If Disney is making these kinds of movies now, it sends a good message to girls, telling them to be themselves. It mixes the classic girly love of princesses with the idea that one should be themselves and that essentially girls don't need to have a guy in their life to live "happily ever after." These are the kinds of movies I would one day want my own daughters to watch.