Sandals With A Side Of Steak

I didn't read a single book growing up, from kindergarten to my senior year of high school, and up until I was about 20, I wore this fact like a badge of honor. I never took the time to get good at reading early on, so it's no wonder I thought of myself as someone who "isn't a book reader" any time a conversation came up about it. Of the short list of regrets I have, not getting into reading sooner is on that list.  During the time when I started to read physical books, I would read books I knew would hold my attention, like the Harry Potter series and certain historical fiction novels, leaving the more complex topics for audiobooks because it was the best way I could digest the information since I was so unpracticed when it came to sitting down and doing nothing but read a book word by word. This was a great place to start because I decreased the likelihood of getting discouraged, creating a library of cool-looking, unread books. It is common when you are first s...

I like to come up with random challenges that are relatively easy but go against what I usually do in my daily routine. Towards the end of January, I noticed I always had music playing in the background. It felt like I couldn't live in silence, even if it was just between walking from my car to the library to study.  Whenever I recognize a dependency in my life, I consider why I have gravitated there and take it as a sign that I need to shake things up. Simultaneously, I have been wanting to stop paying for internet radios and go back to owning the audio files that I listen to so I can fill up my Zune and relearn exactly what type of music I want to listen to when I don't have every song in the universe to choose from. Since February was about to start, I decided to take the whole month off from music to see how it felt and how much of a difference it made to my day to allow silence back into my life. The first few days weren't that bad; I would think of a song I wanted to...

      When the topic of slant reporting is brought up, it is hard not to go straight to politics and how the titans of political media are mismanaging their power by inserting their own narratives while claiming to be unbiased, demonizing whoever is on the opposite side of the court.       Elon Musk has been investing a lot of time and money to lessen the amount of misinformation by legitimizing levels of X to report all ends of the political spectrum in one service with the intent to show that the extremes of each side are not the only voices out there. One of the ways this is being done is by hiring political reporters from the left, right, and middle of the political seesaw who seem to have some semblance of journalistic integrity.     Musk's most recent hire and fire was Don Lemon, a "popular" CNN political reporter who was let go last year for his comments on specific incumbents of the republican party . Lemon conducted an interview with...

     Since becoming a new resident of Arizona at the beginning of the year, I noticed an immediate difference in the air here compared to the various other places I have lived across the US. No, I'm not talking about how hot it is; I am talking about the increased sense of community and effort to improve. Typically, local news is just a bunch of downer stories about human trafficking and old ladies being mugged. Though that might happen here, it is not all we are told about in the news. For every negative story, there seem to be two or three uplifting stories of a local business raising money for another local cause.       Almost the entire time I have lived in Arizona I have been a student at Glendale Community College, and it has been very cool to be around so many people going against the odds of their upbringing to get the education they want to create a better life for themselves. Knowing that the local and state governments are setting such big g...

     Over the years, the public has created an opinion of Michael Moore, you either love or hate him, with no in-between. This is no surprise given his choice to only tackle wildly complicated and socially charged subjects such as the truth behind 9/11 , the Columbine shooting , America's healthcare system , and basically anything relating to presidential controversies.      Until watching "Capitalism: A Love Story," I was certainly someone who fell closer to hate than love towards him and his projects, though I don't personally hate anyone. I always seek ways to challenge my opinions and beliefs, and this was a fantastic experience doing just that. Michael does an amazing job of smacking you in the face with the most real examples of any given topic that he is presenting. Even though I knew full well what was going on with his gonzo /interview journalism tactics, I caught myself getting emotionally invested multiple times just by how he set up a scene....