On The Cusp

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I didn't have any news for a while because I didn't really have the energy to expend on typing anything. I was pretty busy last week with midterms, and other miscellaneuous stress. On last friday, right before fall break I was about ready to snap, I had spent all day typing essays for a take home test and then rea;lized that I forgot to go to a meeting with the teacher of a class that I am barely passing.

Needless to say I am muych better now. Graphic Design 1 is my big headache this semester, it's requiring the majority of my time. I'm running into the same old lesson that I thought I had learned my freshman year. If I stay up past 1am, 2, or 3am every night for a while everything just starts to fall apart. Woirk, school, friendships, it all suffers when I don't get enough rest.

So, I'm back now and things are going better. A prank war has been disrupted with a third party entering the fray unexpectedly. Pranks are awesome.

So, in general things are going pretty good, and I am totally pumped for this weekend, which is the Kearney Iron Man Retreat. Fire, guns, and meat.

Away From School

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< ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = ""urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"" />10/05/2004

I intend to upload this, along with another philosophy journal as soon as I find a connection to the internet. I’m in my Grandma’s house right now, I just came back from the visitation of my grandfathers body. Tomorrow is the burial and funeral. It all seems to be a bit much right now. It’s odd, the reaction I felt when I stood at the door to the funeral home sanctuary. It was fear.

I received the call at < ?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = ""urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"" />1:30PM on Sunday. I was in the park enjoying a pizza with Becca. In a few short sentences that I cannot now recall, my mom told me that Grandpa, my Dad’s Dad, had passed away. The whole family knew that it was going to happen, he had been steadily declining in health for the past 3 years. In the past few months he had been in the hospital recovering from surgery. He never really recovered. The doctors realized this and did what they could to keep him from getting worse, and ease his suffering. He was suffering. I’m sure that most people do suffer before the end, too often people suffer for great lengths of time fighting a battle which everyone eventually loses.

When I first saw Grandma this afternoon she said tearfully, “He just couldn’t breathe anymore.” I held her close, the way she had hugged me when she was as much taller than me as I am to her now. Painful words, those words that Grandma uttered, feeling the need to explain what had happened. Why hadn’t seemed important to me before, I only had thought about the fact that it had finally happened.

When I looked down from my phone after I hung up with my Mom Sunday afternoon, I noticed with the one part of my mind that wasn’t numbed that my cell phone said 1:30 referring to the total length of the call, and then the numbers stayed the same when the display switched back to showing the current time. That’s one of those strange minute details that my mind picked up on and it will probably be burned into my memory for a long time. One minute and thirty seconds was all the longer it took for me to find out about the passing of my Grandpa. One hour and thirty minutes past noon on October Third. There is no real significance to that, other than the fact that my mind felt it necessary to catalogue a little detail like that. Was it some sort of psychological defense mechanism perhaps? Give me some coincidence to process while I try to absorb the raw fact of what I just learned. I was really in pretty good shape the whole time up until I got here this afternoon. No real heavy feelings of hurt or depression at all.

I was afraid this evening, afraid of walking through those doors, past those pews to what was waiting in the front of that little sanctuary. I could see his head above the edge of the casket from outside, and I froze. I didn’t want to come to grips with reality. I had avoided the harshness of this particular reality until now. There is something devastatingly real about a dead body. Reality hits you like a ton of bricks when you see something like that.

Once the reality set in I was able to absorb the reality of it all and eventually the tears stopped, and I could distract myself by talking to some friends that had come up. It helped to talk to people that I was close with and do normal things at a time like that, It made coping much easier, the whole thing became much less strange, and I no longer feared too look at him.

Once the human reaction had subsided I was able to look at the spiritual side and received a great deal of comfort from the fact that Grandpa had come to know Christ a little over a month ago. Dad was able to bring him to a personal relationship with Jesus, and that fact helps a great deal. I know now that Grandpa Bendt is enjoying a perfect body and worshiping with joy in heaven right now. His spirit is secure for eternity, because of this I feel peace tonight.

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10/06/2004

The funeral for grandpa was today. It was much easier to deal with this just like any other sad occurrence in life. That is, after the reality of it all had set in. Grandma was handling things better after it was all over with. I don’t know what she will do once the family slowly trickles away. Mom, my sister and myself left a few hours after the funeral reception was over. I am driving back to Kearney tomorrow morning. At which point I should be able to post this since I didn’t have time to find a hotspot today. I suppose the reason I wrote the somewhat overly dramatic post above this is because this has been first real encounter with the death of someone that I know and love. I wasn’t the closest with my Grandpa, but he was still close family. As one of only 3 grandchildren, we got to spend quite a bit of time with Grandpa and Grandma. In fact my sister and I were the only grandchildren that they saw more than once every other year.

Journal #7

At one point in the republic Socrates submits the idea that medicine should not be used on those that will not be able to immediately return to a productive role in society. According to him, doctors should not expend their efforts to prolong the life of a wealthy person who has done little for society and will not be able to add something productive to society. The callous attitude of Socrates toward medical care for those of ailing health seems cynical and harsh to me. Socrates is only one step from recommending euthanasia for those who are a burden on society. Americans are wealthy and spoiled, I don’t see why we cannot expend some of our wealth to attempt to prolong the life of a loved one who is sick, or ease their suffering. To realistically carry out Socrates idea, we would need to implement some sort of scoring system. Each person gains credit for the hours of work they put towards the common good. As soon as the cost of their medical care exceeds that which we gain from keeping the ill person around, we would have to cut off care and let them pass away. This type of point tracking system is truly ridiculous and harsh towards any sort of human sensibilities. I wish that I could visit the hypothetical city that Socrates so gladly constructs for the best interests of mankind, and see if much remains that we would recognize as humanity in their hearts.

Blatant Propaganda

Propaganda is most dangerous when it is subtle and subconciously sways peoples attitudes. Luckily this particular piece of propaganda has all the subtlety of a 300 pound asian man in a floral print mumu. This video is of incredible production quality. I obviously disagree with the aim of the propaganda, but you have to admire the skill and time it took to produce this video. The animation, modeling, sound, everything is top notch. The artistic value is so high that you could take a still frame of anywhere in this movie and it would be a very strong design layout. Needless to say, I'm impressed, check it out for yourselves.

Mass Media Content Analysis Idea

To analyze the most common methods of advertising on the web. I will examine a random selection of popular web-sites that cover a variety of interest areas. On these web-sites I will record the number of indivudual advertising areas on the front page. Each advertising area will be broken down in to a categories. First being text vs. graphic ads. Of the graphic ads I will record whether they are animated or still images. And I will also record whether the graphic ads attempt to trick the user into clicking them through trickery.

Roomate

"Soon, I will be getting a roomate. I've just finished rearranging my room to make space for him and his stuff. I was really enjoying having my own room for a while this year, but this guy wanted to move into the house and I had never paid for a single room so I get a roomate. Which is actually fine. I'm not too upset about it, having a roomate will be kinda fun again. I won't be much of a roomate for the guy though, I'm rarely in my room until after 5pm any given day. Thursdays he might see me for an entire hour.

With my schedule, this room is mainly just a place to sleep, and that activity is taking less and less time every week it seems like. It's a little hypocritical to complain about lack of sleep when I didn't wake up till 1:30 today.

I have a couple papers to write and another set of roughs for art due early this week. I really need to get cracking on that stuff."