Food Inc.

Today was my first day of political documentaries, a big moment I know... I logged on to me lover (Netflix) and selected Political Documentaries and chose.... "Food Inc." Yes mainly I chose this because it had a very cute cow on the front.

Well, if you'll ever so carefully take a gander, yes a gander, at the phrase on the cover,
"You'll never look at dinner the same way again"

Hmm, weeeeell that lasted for a strong hour or so. While the movie pointed a strong finger at "The Man" it didn't have too much of an effect on me. The documentary was about how food has become an assembly line and that the "BIG" companies don't give a fun-sized candy about us lowly peasants. How, animals being processed into food are maltreated, malnourished, disease ridden. The story line followed a woman who had lost her son to E.coli in a cheeseburger gone wrong trying to put forth better policies in the FDA. Also, a disgruntled organic pig farmer who was angered against the big pig farmers who was constantly giving his opinions about how animals should be treated in the slaughtering and housing process. I, the cynical one, actually found what he had to say was very reasonable. He spoke of how the animals are not eating their natural diets and were insanely overcrowded. They then went on to show video clips scarier than Disney Channel's attempts of decent television. They showed the machines that the animals went through just to be slaughtered in cruel ways of their forced pathetic lives. I practically sound like a vegan! While it does make me very sad that they treat God's innocent creatures like this my love of meat overcomes all; however, the three slices of bacon I ate an hour ago did go down with some guilt.

Yep, that sure is a pumpkin; that's all the theatricality your going to get from me. I am excited for tomorrow though! I'm not trick or treating per say but I am going to take my dogs on a special walk...


HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/511eHmnaBCL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Just when you thought you were almost done with politics...

Time for political documentaries.... yay. First one tonight though! I hope you all tune in! Honestly, I have no political opinion whatsoever, except that both parties should stop making political commercials.  Frankly, I think they just annoy every one and you're definitely not convincing me to vote for you by seperating me from my Pretty Little Liars just that much longer than I need to. And sometimes a girl just needs her Pretty Little Liars. I don't even know when the election is! So now that we've clarified that I really am  not opinionated in that category, check in tonight!

photo from
http://curiousphotos.blogspot.com/2009/06/funny-pictures-of-politicians-50-pics.html

My twiiiiitah

My Twitter account is @katiehalt37626 for quick updates about upcoming blogs, follow me so that I may entertain your brain for however long it takes you to read a blog. You may think to yourself someday "Hmm... I wonder who crossed the Delaware River on Christmas 1776?" You just ever so happen to be on twitter and see my post, "George Washington documentary tonight, I will solve any questions about his involvement with the Delaware River in a quirky way! #life". Well good sir or ma'm that is why you must follow me on twitter. I explain things awesomer than my good friend Wikipedia ever could. Just sayin'...

The Making of The Dark Side of the Moon

Well, I've never really been a big Pink Floyd fan. And... I'm still not. I'm possibly a semi-fan. I knew exactly .5 of their songs. Yes, .5 I recognize about half of "Money". But I've always found their album cover to be pretty!

I swear I'm not one of those teenagers who hasn't heard classic rock before, I love Weezer after all... Kidding! Really though, my dad bathed me in The Beatles and The Who; I even have their records. That's right I said RECORDS I have a remastered record player in my room; which I bet even most of you cynical adult readers don't even have! So I know my stuff (other than just the two I mentioned) and I found I liked Pink Floyd, even today I heard the full "Money" and I asked my 50 year old mother not to change the station.

Netflix was my supplier as usual and the documentary.... The Making of the Dark Side of the Moon. It was good actually! A LOT better than that Eminem thing. It was mainly about the era of which it was made and why they made the songs they did. So the title was kind of self-explanatory. It explained all of them except maybe "Speak to Me" and "Any Colour you like". The beginning starts out with them saying that they were all collectively creative in the process and had a common goal of getting rich and famous. Pink Floyd was mainly underground rock during a glam rock period so them becoming famous in my opinion helped along or was helped along by the hippie movement. But here is a brief summary of each song:

Breathe (In the Air): Was one of the band's favorite if not their favorite song.Roger Waters came up from the first couple cords based of a song by Myles Davis.
On the Run: Was an experimentation of the sound board. Playing the sound board was a part of their concerts and they had multiple people on the desk of it just for the one song.
Time: Was the realization that life is always happening, even when you're "waiting for life to begin". It features four female singers; Doris Troy, Lesley Duncan, Liza Strike, and Barry St. John. And it's my personal favorite.
The Great Gig in the Sky: Clare Torry was brought in and the entire thing was improvised. They told her to think of death and horror, and when she came out she was very embarrassed and they assured her that it was really good.
Money: Was Pink Floyd's real first hit and they thought it was almost hypocritical that they were singing of the negative effects of money and all of their goals were to make money and be famous. And after they did make money they said at first they didn't know what to do with themselves.
Us and Them: Is a reflection upon other peoples lives and thinking about how people see you and how you see them. Just really thinking retrospectively; it's about ordinary people.
Brain Damage: Is about lunacy, they brought in ordinary people and they interviewed them. They even used their recordings in the song.
Pink Floyd to me at least is very hippie-ish and some of the songs start to sound the same to me... Sorry Floyd fans. But even I have to admit as I was writing this I bought "Eclipse", "Time" and "Breathe". So what's my over all rating?

Thanks for reading! Here are the citations for the pictures in case any of you are really cool:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a0/The_Making_of_The_Dark_Side_of_the_Moon.jpg

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/TheDarkSideOfTheMoon?from=Main.TheDarkSideOfTheMoon

www.netflix.com

Eminem AKA

First blog holla! Finally right? Well, I've come back to you well informed on my topic and at the same time a little honestly uninterested.

I now know what a Rockumentary is! It is defined as:

a documentary about rock music.

Wow. Because I definitely would have been lost without that informative definition...

ANYWAYS, I watched my first one tonight called Eminem AKA made in 2004. Technically it's not about rock music so I guess that makes Dictionary.com wrong. Moving on, it was quite informative; especially for a luke-warm Eminem fan. I'm not a huge rap fan and if I do like any of it it's usually pretty mainstream. Sorry underground rap hipsters. I think in my total archive of Eminem (I'm already getting sick of typing that word) I have 9 songs; four of which are featuring other artists. None are pertaining to any of his personal struggles that I'm aware of except maybe "Not Afraid". The movie begins with a brief summary of his life that could have been easily read from Wikipedia. Which I did. Then of the different stages of his life shown with comic book pictures, very original... *cough* MARVEL *cough* and the theme of comic books throughout the movie. It does have relevance however, according to Betty Kresin, Todd Nelson, and Debbie Nelson-Mathers a young Marshall Mathers (Eminem) loved heros and Eminem quoted in his song "Sayin' Goodbye To Hollywood" Eminem raps, 

"Bury my face in comic books...cause I don't want to look at nuthin', this world's too much,"  

Betty Kresin is Marshall's grandma, Todd Nelson is his uncle, and Debbie Nelson-Mathers is his mommy. Basically, the entire time the mom and the grandma (who are mother and daughter) have a 14-year-old-girlish-fight about who's to blame for Eminem being so screwed up. I summed it up as: the Grandma is irresponsible and won't take any blame for marrying a whole bunch of alcoholics and not to mention at the age of fourteen (that's an eighth grader by the way). The mom is the type that thinks she's doing well but could be doing much better and Eminem says in an interview (not in the movie) that she was constantly suing someone. She also moved him back and fourth between Missouri and Detroit about 20 times for no apparent reason before he was even in the sixth grade. Uncle Todd is the good father figure. 
So the mom and Marshall end up in Detroit for good and the dad abandoned them when Eminem was little. Debbie went on to make it seem like they were the only white people in Detroit and when Marshall was 12 or 13 a black kid put him in a coma in the school bathroom where it took Eminem a year to regain motor skills. 

I personally hate reading paragraphs so here is a basic list of his life:
Born, dad abuses mom ( he leaves), mom and Marshall move a lot, settle in Detroit, Marshall gets Chris Browned in a bathroom, Kim Scott moves in with Mathers family as foster child, Kim and Eminem fall in love, mom won't allow it, Kim and him move out and live with friends, Kim gets preggers, Eminem is starting to get famous via rap battles, Hailie Jade Mathers born 1995, Eminem gets fo reahl famous, him and Kim get married, mom sues Eminem (her only son) for deformation of character for 10 MILLION DOLLARS, and then he and Kim get a divorce.

I really did feel bad for the mom until she SUED HER OWN SON. Yeah, Ms. Motherofthecentury you definitely got your ten million... Just kidding. She only received $25,000 which she had to use to pay off her lawyers and taxes with so basically she burned a bridge in a 90210 style. Another ridiculous suit was the boy that put Eminem in a coma... yes, he is working as a trash collector. No, he did not receive a penny but he did receive a rap form of a decline of suit from the legal department. Seriously. I guess the judicial system does develop a sense of humor in their spare time of proving false paternity of pregnant Justin Bieber fans. Even the sweet old daughter-blaming granny jumped on the Eminem cash-cow and wrote a tell all book about Eminem and Debbie's relationship. I bet she knits and bakes cookies too.

So, by now I'm wondering when is Eminem going to speak for himself. Because the constant feuding and inconsistent information from the mom and the grandma has me confused. So I'm waiting and waiting throughout the film and still no Marshall Mathers. They roll the credits and I'm left with a million questions. The entire thing made it seem like Eminem was dead and couldn't speak for himself. It was insanely depressing. I get that he had a bad life and I really do feel for him, but even when he made it big they only emphasized on what was going wrong in his life. I was thinking to myself, "You have millions of dollars! Why not actually smile in a picture with your adorable two year old?" Speaking of which I had no idea how their relationship was. That was something I was actually interested in and they spoke so little of her that I Wikipedia-ed her and even told from the cold third person voice of Mr.Wiki was more heart touching than the entire movie! As it turns of Hailie is the same age as me.. "hmm... I wonder whats she's like," was my next thought.

Questioned answered. I've developed a rating system of 1-10 original right? 10 being I want to go marry this person or start a charity on the spot, 1 being I want to go slap this movie in the face with a blazing Hot Pocket. Eminem AKA receives.....

Procrastinating

Well, after my mother talking me out of doing the everyday thing (which I'm beginning to agree with due to an immensely busy schedule) so tonight will be my first Rockumentary ever. Yes, finally tonight any of you that care. Also I will be tweeting my semi-official schedule on @katiehalt37626 so yes I am asking you to stalk my twitter and blog because frankly in my newspaper class we have mini competitions to see who can get more page view. So far this one kid has 105 page views which I'm convinced that he just looked at his page 104 times and the other one was his mother. SO, if you legit like this so far limited blog... It's corny but tell your friends! And to my sister Jilli if you're reading this, you write for a newspaper; be a dear and give m advice or recommend me to your dean or Obama or something. Christmas is coming soon *wink* *wink*. See you guys (or hopefully your page views tonight) I hope you enjoy it! I really do like writing for my tiny audience :)

Pilot

My name is Katie Halt. I am a teenager in Kansas where I play soccer and enjoy my life with two dogs and an iPhone. I love to travel and have been to South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, France, Italy, various Caribbean islands, and hopefully by next summer England as well. I do not have many political opinions or prejudices. I guess one could call me a clean slate or a fresh thought. I am one of those nerds that absolutely loves those documentaries that they play in high school. So when my parents gave me a Netflix account it was bye-bye to any pre-existing social life and hello Revolutionary War: Life of George Washington. Documentaries address social, political and health related conflicts in our world as well as historical information. Some provide persuasion to inflict opinions upon the weak minded and some are to lull you to sleep it seems. Netflix divides it's documentaries into twelve categories; I'll be focusing on eight. Biographical, foreign, historical, political, rockumentaries (whatever that means), science and nature, social and cultural, and travel/adventure. I will be posting every week and have divided up my time/weeks until May 18.  How on earth will I be able to stand 18 days of political documentaries? I have no idea... Well I came up with a schedule that will probably change due to my less than accurate math skills
October 4-29= Rockumentaries because I'm curious as to what they are.
October 30-Nov. 22= Political; due to the election, creative I know.
November 23-Dec 18= Cultural because they're my favorite, and hey it's close to Christmas so why not...
January 7-30= Biographical, no reason but I feel smart typing it.
January 31-Feb 25= Historical because I feel like it's related to biographical and why not get rid of the ones about dead guys all together
February 26-March 28=science and nature; I have to get it done sometime I suppose.
March 29-April 23= Foreign because next category is travel which is typically foreign.
April 24-May 17= As promised travel so I get pysched for my trip to England and Paris (not likely to need any more excitement but it won't hurt). Well this should be at the very interesting, to me at least (maybe). And to any of you odd enough to read this you're either divinely inspired or are friends and family forced to read this. So let me start this off by greeting my one true follower; hi mom!