late night, oh wait, no, early morning.

So I am the definition of procrastination. Happens way too often, and i gotta break the habit before college. Staying up all night sucks. My last full day of highschool will be spent either falling asleep or being completely hyper from being overtired, I have yet to find out. I wrote 2 essays last night and obviously writting journals now. Gonna do the movie review too, officially have 44 minutes left in my last full first period. I'm here in Mayer's new room, not too sure if the change is good or not, spent so much time in the last room, too many memories to count. This whole school has to many memories to even begin to start counting. I've had a blast with my elementary friends, people i met when I was little through soccer and such and new friends I've met along the way. We may have complained all the way through, but you gotta admit, Myer was pretty good to us. The staff was awesome, had some great classes and learned a ton. Europe trips with Harris were AMAZING. Definitely once in a lifetime experiences that will never be matched. Here I go getting side tracked again. Movie review time!

Library Fun :)

I'm listening to Lost Coastlines with my brotha from anotha motha Jahson. He's tapping along to the music and singing. We were apparently supposed to watch a movie but we got called down to the library. We just took some pretty sick pictures on Carissa's Macbook with all the effects because Brandon wanted new Facebbok pictures, they turned out really good. Sirianni even joined us :)Bryan is hitting Jason, it's funny because he's so skinny but he's got a mean punch. Jason is working on his data project right now. He procrastinated and didn't finish his slide show, but i'm not one to talk about procrastination. Brandon is wearing his awesome Watchmen shirt. The pictures are officially up on facebook! I'm gonna miss this class, Carm, you've been awesome. The content was great even though there wasn't much, you made it fun. Jason's singing again, he's super good. We're listening to For Real by Okkervil River, it's pretty ballin'. Well I have alot more to do, so I think this is all I have to say for now.

George, my love.

I'd just like to confess my love for George Strouboulopoulos. He is an ex-VJ for Much Music and has now moved on the hosting his own show The Hour on CBC. He interviews politicians, activists, celebrities and everyone in between. Unfortunately, you ahve to be 18 to attend the show, so I can't meet him until December :( He truly is amazing. His show airs at 11 pm and catches the attention of the youth in order to inform the of current world issues. Everything from the graphics, music, and even the style of his of his clothes attract the youth (his good looks help too). He makes sure that the mix of his guests are enough celebrities to even out politicians and such in order to keep their attention, however other more mature youth watch to see these politicians and activist yet the comedy is a nice touch. He introduces each guest with "The Bio", a short background on them. He alsodoes other segments such as "Best Story Ever" which is introduced by squeaky voiced clay people then his guests are taped telling their best story ever. He is very envolved with the audience, whether it be taking pictures after the show and taking time to talk, to his interactive website at CBC.ca, you can e-mail him, he has an updated blog and also has other seperate websites, facebook, myspace and all the other gizmos available today. I love watching this show. Keeping up to date with current issues is easy thanks to him and the awesome people at CBC.

Our Project - Same-Sex Marriage

So on Friday Brandon, Ashneet and I did our Friday Debate on same-sex marriage. After deciding on our topic randomly in class the day before and passing it by Mr. C, we got the go-ahead. We got together at Brandon's and got our work done over pizza and wings with his cute, hyper dog Brandy coming to visit every once in a while. Surprisingly we were very productive and got it done pretty quickly :)

The presentation went well and the discussion picked up at a good pace. We got into discussions on whether or not same-sex marriage should be allowed which was a pretty unanimous yes, although the discussion went into what is the definition of marriage and if the term belonged to the church. Because marriage was originally to unite a man and a woman in order to procreate, should the term "marriage" only belong to the church and all other marriages perhaps be called "civil unions" or something along those lines as would same sex marriage. I forget who but someone asked whether or not you would be insulted if someone said that the title of "marriage" would be stripped from you and be given another title. I really liked your answer that no matter what, you didn't even need the title of marriage as you planned to be with your wife forever anyway. I think alot of people are leaning towards that mindset lately due to the drop in religious practise and don't find it necessary anymore. Like my aunt, I've never met her first husband, the father of my cousins, maybe when I was little but i don't remember him. She now lives with her techinically Fiance Joe after almost 10 years I think. He proposed to her, yet they both decided that it isn't necessary to be married and they are perfectly content, probably happier than if they would be married.

Discussions always tend to get heated when it comes to issues involving religion and it didn't disappoint this time either. The class has been really good this semester for debates and I really enjoyed it. Good choice in assignment Mr. C!

Sicko

In class we watched Sicko, a documentary by Michael Moore regarding the American health system, or lack of one. They are capable of spending millions of dollars a day on keeping up the war in the east, yet they can't even, or won't, care for their people. It's truly tragic to watch and listen to the stories of the people profiled in the documentary. A mother lost her daughter because the insurance company wouldn't let her transfer hospitals when her daughter had a high fever, a wife lost her husband and her daughter was left without a father because the insurance companies said the treatments he needed were not needed. Heroes from 9/11 were not even allowed care for the illnesses that came along with breathing in the fumes and dust while helping, simply because they were volunteers and not city employees.

When Americans hear socialized health care, they are taught to think communism which is way far off. They are completely shocked that visiting hospitals and emergency rooms, surgeries, many medications and family doctors are all free services in Canada and other countries. France for example takes it much further. You are entitled to up to a year paid maternity leave and once the baby is born you get a government employee to come to the house a few hours twice a week to help with whatever needs to be done. You get many weeks of paid holidays, and even a week off for your honeymoon. Like Michael said, it's no wonder Americans are taught to hate the French, they may actually like their ways and want the same. England is also good to it's people. A good example for them is a single dispensing charge at pharmacies for any drug and any amount of it. Even Cuba has a great health system. When Michael brought the 9/11 volunteers there, they were openly greeted and were given the tests and treatments that they were denied in the States and got their normally 100$ medications for the equivalent of about 5 cents American. When they went to Cuba, their original stop was to Guantanamo Bay prison where high security prisoners, such as Al Quaeda terrorists are being held. Amazingly, they are receiving frequent checkups from doctors, are being given the medications they need, are having preventative tests done and are getting necessary surgeries all done for FREE in the onsite hospital. Does that sound fair to you? And to top it off, they have video games in their rooms and countless other luxuries. Some prison eh? They're living better in prison than they would be at home.

It's good to see that progress was trying to be made by Hilary Clinton who wanted to make government run health care, but of course the money hungry politicians made sure that she was beaten out. It's tragic to think of how many people are denied health care and unfortunately die because of it. It's also tragic to think of the people in the claims office knowing that they have to deny these patients, knowing that that is the likely outcome. It is not their decision, they are simply the messengers making a living and it's sad. The big shots that own the place are upstairs sitting in their Armani suits puffing on some Cubans as people are at home suffering.

The issue is that all of these countries that have government run health care have the mindset of helping those around you, because they would do the same for you. In the US, it is a very capitalist society and people are greedy, not wanting to pay extra taxes. Why should they if it isn't directly benefiting themselves right? They don't realize that paying those few extra tax dollars now will help them down the line to pay for that $100,000 surgery if they get hit by a bus. But it's not their faults. The government has taught them to think this way. If they were to give healthcare, the taxes would skyrocket like in Canada or France. They're made to think that we struggle to get by because our taxes are so high, which is not the case. Yeah, our taxes are quite high, but still not as high as some countries. Look at all of the services we have though, health care, schools, daycares, postal service. These services aren't free. We pay for them, but we all benefit. The higher the taxes, the more services are provided, making life easier for us all. What more can you ask for?