navratri..an indian festival

this week starts the hindu festival of navratri...its my favorite time of the year!! i wait and plan for these nine days of celebration from the beginning of the year. navratri celebrates the nine forms of the goddess Durga and her triumph over evil beings..worship and dance commence for nine days in celebration of the goddesses triumph and "shaki" power..the tenth day is spent in worship and prayer completeing the holy month in october..

the video below shows an example of the typical navratri dance form, garba/raas...(there's a video of the SMU traditional indian dance team performing a competitive form of this dance that can be viewed in an earlier post)

South Brunswick High School Navratri Garba 2007

Election 2008

so with the election year approaching i have to wonder whether any of the candidates actually care about the issues at hand...now i am cynical of the government, but i i truely wonder whether any of the presidental candidates care about what is affecting the US. i hope that people our age begin to start voicing their opinions and vote. every vote counts and who wants another president like the one we have now?? its our job to fix the wrongs that have been created and as much as we might doubt our work and opinions help..they really do..everything we do helps......remember: voice your opinions and make an effort to change the things that are affecting us, dont just sit and complain.

to go organic or not??

so yesterday i had dinner at a restaurant that serves 100% organic foods (meats, vegetables, and fruits). now i've never considered ever eating purely organic food, i mean it'd be nice to eat completely organic food but who has the time to cook orgainic foods or pay the money for a purely organic meal. i mean sometimes i feel that because business know that organic foods are good for people they'll charge you double for it...

i've always heard that eating organic foods cures certain diseases, prevents certain diseases and is good for the mind and body in total...i actually know a person that was suffering from cronic depression who switched to eating completely organic and began to get better right off the bat...today she's 100% better and is completely off the use of depression medications.

so i guess switching to complete organic would be the smart thing to do..i mean nothing to lose..if only it wasn;t so damn expensive...

MTV AIDS (shot)

AIDS awareness and prevention

i was recently researching new AIDS treatments and prevention strategies when i happened upon a set of foreign advertisements from France and a video commercial that aired on MTV.. the ads were quite disturbing, but not as disturbing as the video..the ads read "Without a condom you're making love with AIDS. Protect yourself."

the video is titled "Shots" and depicts the fact that if you are having unprotected sex its like being shot with a gun...its your ticket to death.. i'll post the video later on....(warning: parental discretion is advised..the video is a bit graffic)

reflection....the outside

after yesterday's post i realised i also wanted to mention something about personal appearance in the mirror....look at yourself and ignore all those little imperfections....those blemishes, pimples, wrinkles, bumps, hair...all that stuff you "think" others are looking at, but really no one notices. when i think about all those people that look in the mirror and see things that dont exist like fat or wrinkles, or even little imperfections.....and these things lead to eating disorders, plastic surgeries, and other bizarre behavior.

never take what you see in the mirror seriously........................it makes me sad to see kids as young as 8 with mental disorders dealing with their appearance.

relflection...whos really looking back

have you ever looked in the mirror and wondered who the person staring back at you is. does that person have dreams and hopes? does that person want things that everyone has? is happy with the life they have right now?

like many people i have looked at myself in the mirror and wondered these things. if the person was really another person, would his life be like mine, or would he be doing something cool like flying a plane, or rescuing endangered species? i have wondered these things about myself. did i make the right decisions? am i happy?

i finally realized after looking in the mirror that what i was looking at was a reflection and only a reflection. thats its...i make the decisions in my life and i make my own dreams..next time just look in the mirror and realize the person looking back at you is content with whats going on...and if he's not change..its never too late.....

what's in a lie..really??

why is lieing something that people take so seriously at times. i understand that no one likes to be lied to, but if you think about every person in the entire world has lied at least once. TV lies to us, the government lies to us, our own parents have lied to us..so what is it that makes lieing ok or not ok? sometimes we have to lie and sometimes we lie so that we don't get hurt or that we don't hurt others. dishonesty is a facet of our lives and as much as we try to stop it, it will continue...so why is it so bad? we have to believe that sometimes lieing really does help or really does occur to spare our feelings and emotions. if inherently all men are good at heart, does lieing make them not good people, or is it just a simple mistake that a good person makes?

the magnificance continues...

again i am wowed by the way nature has an effect on the human psyche...its amazing how the turning of a leaf, a cool gust of wind, or even the occasional autumn sunset...i have begun the little things in life and i find that every aspect of my day changes when i begin to feel the affects of fall...warm sweaters, pie, a blanket to snuggle in....

The many faces of fall...

i can't believe that fall is finally here...its wonderful to see how light can change the way you feel about the day. the way it plays off of everything it touches...i think the best portrayal of this is "miracle". you would think that we would never see fall in dallas, let alone in our own backyard, but this fall i've been seeing the pictuesque images of fall everywhere i turn..i only wish that it would get colder...

Liberty Mutual Ad (1st edition):

Paying it forward through advertising...

With the world "going green" and world becoming more socially responsible we are beginning to see many "socially responsible" commericals..one of the best ones that i have seen is the "half acre" paying it forward Liberty Mutual commercial...it just proves that if we all did something to help someone out and others saw that we could begin to change the world..step by step we could all begin to (i know its cliche) make the world a better place....its amazing what advertising like this could do to the world..

Semiotics

the siginifier in the is ad is the car, while the signified is the grater....the advertiser tricks the mind into thinking that the image is of a grater, but uses the car to replace the image...according to charles pierce's theory the image symbolically portrays a grater, iconically portrays a car, and indexically portrays a utility item...according to barthes theory the denotative portrayal is of a car, and connotative portral of a utility item...

just some thoughts about fall....

my favorite thing about fall is the leaves...i love watching them fall and having them cover every inch of the ground below..its like natures giving us a little gift to keep us happy during the winter...soon the air gets colder, the nights become longer, and you can look forward to the warm fires, the hor chocolate, and getting bundled up in sweaters and jackets....

its funny that its already fall but its still 95 degrees outside......sometimes i wish i lived up in the northeast where fall is actually a defined sense of time...

rolling balls of color...and elmo goes email..

recently crayola came out with a new set of products called "crayola beginnings"...these new products are creative products made to be easily handled by children's hands...one of the products "Tadoodles" is a plastic toy containing a brush that allows little children (9 months +) to paint masterpieces enhancing a children creativity at a very very young age...

another company joining the band-wagon is playskool..playskool recently created a line of toys for the technically savvy child...one of the products is the child friendly Internet tool that allows kids to pick up a figurine place it in a spot that connects the Internet to a game page for the kid..it monitors Internet behavior in children and helps kids to learn about the Internet...another item is a kids digital camera....it can be thrown around, smashed and bashed and still contains 6.5 megapixel picture quality..

man i wish i was a still a kid..or at least a kid that was born in this day and age...

some things to think about....

here are some stupid things to think about....

why don't sheep shrink when it rains???

if wool shrinks when you wash it...how come sheep dont shrink when it rains..

why are they called apartments if they are all stuck together???

its kind of true..if apartments are individualized living quarters why are they all connected into one building...

one more stupic thought...

why isn't there any mouse-flavored cat food???

if cartoons always show cats running after mice, or a movie showing a cat eating a mouse, how come there is no mouse-flavored cat food....seems reasonable..right???

InterSEXuality...

this ad for viagra is an example of horizontal intertexuality...the add is for a erectile dysfunction pill hence the bed..while the dots resemble the game "Twister"..there is also a suggestion that viagra also one to play "sexually"....very smart..

She done did it again ! ? !

so britany spears finally lost the custody of both her kids in a long drawn out case..i mean seriously..the kids are going to kevin..now thats not any better, but at least he's not driving around smoking with his kids sitting on his lap while driving...what is happening to parenting these days???? image how messed up those kids are going to be once they grow up...being famous really does ruin your life..and i bet that had she been a normal person her kids would have been taken away from her a lot sooner..