The World is Ending Today!....Wait Sorry I Mean Tomorrow.

“The Apocalypse is coming!!” is what you might hear in some cheesy movies or novels, but what exactly does this mean? And who decides when it’s coming?

As much as the Apocalypse can be seen as something rooted from the Christian tradition, it has the same formation of the “end of time” or “judgement day” seen in Islam and Judaism. In a quick summary it can be seen as the “good” going up to heaven and the “bad” staying on earth to be tortured. What I can’t seem to wrap my head around is how people can think that they can scientifically calculate it.

The ones claiming to be the most devout and at God’s mercy are the ones sitting here and predicting God’s work. It all seems a little too wrong to me. My dad once said that “the only people afraid of dying are the ones who have a reason to be afraid”. These words always stuck with me because it reminds me that if a person is always true to themselves and true to their values then there isn’t anything to be afraid of. In this day and age people are so free with their thoughts and actions that they need a warning as to when the apocalypse is coming so that they can prepare themselves by suddenly becoming “good” people.

It’s actually funny because people who claim to not believe in God or in a higher power at all but instead believe in the science of evolution quickly turn to the mercy of God because of fear. Fear that they’ll suffer the wrath instead of being taken to heaven. I think that deep down everyone is religious in their own way but they just don’t like to admit it because they want to create their own rules in everyday life. People think of religion as a set of “rules” instead of a spiritual practice that disciplines oneself.

The most important thing that someone can have is respect for themselves. Never forget to stay true to yourself but being mindful of others

Because I love Britney and this song fits so well to this discussion please take a look at her new music video for “Till The World Ends”

Do you think Britney will be Left Behind?

God loves you!

Xo,

Y

Response to Diana’s “Should the Father have a say?”

Hey Diana! Great post! Find it here: http://dianaferlenda.blogspot.com/2011/04/should-father-have-say.html

I must say this post was refreshing as it looked into a new perspective on the topic of abortion. I spoke mostly about teen pregnancy rather than abortion in my last post so I’ll dive into the subject of abortion here.

300 abortions in Canada a day? Wow this is bananas! This should a big red flashing sign screaming warning to the next teens that decide to have unprotected sex.

I definitely think that an abortion should be the decision of both the female and male in the relationship however I do believe that the girl should have the final decision in the matter. She is the one who is going through the big change in her body and she will ultimately be the one who takes care of the baby the most. Not to mention that she has to go through the shame of being called a “slut” for the whole 9 months of her pregnancy whenever someone at school or on the street sees her.

I don’t think it’s fair for the father to force the girl into keeping the baby when it is clear none of them can provide for the child. It should be a hard lesson to both of them that unprotected sex isn’t a joke and that pregnancy can occur at any time and any age.

A woman should always have the choice to do as she pleases with her body but in this case I can completely understand why the male would get to have a say.

I just hope that more awareness is being given in high schools over protected sex and abstinence. Waiting is okay!! I wish girls would understand that having sex doesn’t mean anything.

Everything around us is over sexualized from TV, movies, music and so on. We just have to be conscious of ourselves and detach ourselves from everything else. At the end of the day we have to be able to be happy with our own choices and live with them.

Abortion isn’t a joke and there really is no right answer to whether it’s ethical or not. Religious or not, there are too many different cases where abortion can be seen as acceptable for people to tell you otherwise.

Thanks again Diana for the great read! –I also agree with your last line. Abstinence really is key.

Xo,

Y

Response to Elona’s “Media Violence in Cartoons”

Hey Elona, great post! It can be found here:  http://ekhoy.blogspot.com/2011/03/media-violence-in-cartoons-yesterday-my.html

I really wanted to reply to this post because I seriously identify with this topic. I have two nieces and a nephew who watch cartoons all the time. It’s incredibly heart breaking knowing just how much violence is seen in cartoons. My nephew always likes to play fight and as much as I enjoy spending the time playing with him, his strength outweighs mine already and he’s only 4. I find that he’s becoming increasingly violent and this is definitely stemmed from what he watches on TV.

Children are becoming more and more violent especially at school. They want to emulate what they see on the television screen because they think it’s funny or cool. Kids under the age of 6 can’t grasp what is exactly going on especially when cartoons make it look like a joke. When watching the clip you posted of Sylvester and Tweety was a perfect example of how in 3 minutes of a show there was so much violence in order to give comedic appeal to children. Did the writers of the episode think that a kid might put their siblings head in the waffle iron one day to see what would happen?

Parents need to monitor what their kids are watching or else they might be setting up disasters in their own home. It’s a parent’s job to monitor what their children are doing, watching and playing with. However it is also the responsibility of cartoon creators, writers and networks to make it age appropriate.

When it comes to the case of Eminem, I don’t think he needs to censor his lyrics simply because his audience isn’t targeted at anyone under the age of 14 and by that time kids know (mostly) the difference between right and wrong. Eminem is an adult artist who isn’t trying to be a role model or target to a young audience.

Again thanks for the great read and very interesting and important topic choice!

Xo,

Y

Response to Kathleen’s “Teen Pregnancy: Media Influence or Bad Parenting?”

Found here: http://lifeisbetterinblackandwhite.blogspot.com/2011/04/teen-pregnancy-media-influence-or-bad.html

Thank you Kathleen for such an interesting read!

I decided to respond to this post because of the utter SHOCK I had when reading it. This whole “pregnancy pact” seems so crazy to me that I have a very difficult time believing it. I just can’t wrap my head around the fact that girls want to throw their futures and their morals down the drain, and all for what?? What is to gain from being a teen mother?

When I read the story of your aunt, I had to read it twice just to make sure that I read it correctly. When I was back in grade 8, I was most definitely not thinking about getting pregnant. FOUR out of 25 students? How?? That is 16 percent of the girls she spoke to.  

Why aren’t these girls answering saying that they want to get an education and become business women, doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, journalists, teachers, anything other than being a teen mother. Where is the glamour in being so young and becoming a parent, a single parent at that.

In my opinion media influence and poor parenting are results of this new phenomenon. The media being these new MTV makes it seem like its okay to live this lifestyle. Bad parenting comes in from parents not teaching and advising their children about sex and specifically safe sex and how to stay protected. Teens need to understand that sex isn’t just giving into hormones it’s a sacred thing that teens need to take more seriously and realize everything that comes along with it.

If teens are so careless about sex how do they think they can raise a child?

Parents need to teach their children responsibility and values before they blame their knocked up teen daughter on the media.

Xo,

Y

First comes love, then comes a marriage, then comes a baby in a baby carriage....Or maybe not.

Ah teen pregnancy, what an interesting and seemingly less controversial topic as the years come to pass. Let’s take a look at a few statistics shall we? In Canada, 13 out of 1000 pregnancies involved teen pregnancies and 41 out of 1000 pregnancies in the United States involved teen pregnancies (highest among the world). What is going on?

A few decades ago becoming pregnant out of wedlock seemed to feel like the ultimate shame, a crime almost. Fast forward to 2011 and we have shows promoting TEENS as young as 15 and 16 getting pregnant. MTV shows such as “16 and Pregnant” and “Teen Mom” document teenage girls who got pregnant from their boyfriends, men who aren’t their boyfriends, and how they deal with it. These shows make it seem like its okay for young women to get pregnant before they themselves grow up.  Girls now believe it’s cool to be pregnant and in high school and are PURPOSEFULY doing it in order to be on these shows and receive their 15 minutes of fame.

These girls do not have the faintest idea what it means to be a mother and raise a child. What kind of environment are they putting these new children in if they aren’t even graduated from high school yet? Instead of encouraging this, we as a society should be trying to prevent this from happening. Whatever happened to abstinence? Are the days of women saving themselves until marriage completely gone?

People reading this might think that waiting until marriage is a ludicrous idea now a days but it really isn’t. Why is there a rush to grow up so fast?

Even if young women do decide to have sex before marriage wouldn’t the smart thing to do be to make sure that you are completely protected to avoid this situation. It’s essentially selfish and self destructive to get pregnant at such a young age. By doing so you are ultimately cutting the potential for yourself and your child’s life. How can you provide for a child if you fail to complete an education?

It is so sad to see these women over sexualize themselves, only to regret it later. I am not promoting that women could consider abortion as a resort if they do get pregnant because that is completely and ultimately a decision that each individual woman should make for herself. No one else can be the judge of whether it’s right or wrong.

This blog post should be a warning to all young women out there to think about the situation they are going into before doing anything. Teen pregnancy is becoming too prevalent to ignore it. Too many girls are finding themselves in this predicament and it’s not right.

Girls: Please stop the insanity and remember what wonderful, independent people you are!

Please enjoy and reflect on this Maury show video about a 15 year old girl who WANTS a baby....

Xo,

Y

Response to Elona’s "Gaga the Fame Monster: Monsters and Christianity in Popular Culture"

Hey Elona! Thanks for the great and interesting post! It can be found here: http://ekhoy.blogspot.com/2011/03/gaga-fame-monster-monsters-and.html


Lady Gaga has set herself apart in society as being “different”. She pushes herself so far outside the box of the norm just to prove that she doesn’t care what others have to say about her. She is who she is and she makes no apologies for it. But why does she do it?

Lady Gaga believes that everybody should be able to express themselves the way they are without feeling like they need to conform to a certain type. She is a firm supporter of marriage equality and often speaks out on gay marriage. Gaga does what she wants, when she wants and so far it’s brought her worldwide attention from every age group.

Listening to the song “Monster” is interesting because of the negative light she speaks about monsters (in this case the new boy she’s dating ends up being a monster) and in turn calls her fans “little monsters”. She uses the word monster in many different ways but mostly to describe how a monster is like an outcast in society. She claims to hate fame yet she attracts the most fame out of almost any other artist this decade and because of this calls her album “The Fame Monster”. What I don’t get is why she has to try so hard to set herself apart?

Noticing all her monster versus human references, the Christian ones seem to be the natural ones to follow.

I want to thank you for pointing out the heavy Christian symbolism in her videos because I always found it interesting for a person who believes that everyone should be “free” and not confined to rules demonstrates Christian symbols in her videos.  The “monster” that she has in her Bad Romance video is extremely similar to the picture you posted about “Saint Wolfgang”. You really nailed it when you spoke about evil collaborating with this pious. She does see herself as the evil spirit in society and collaborating as you put it, with the Christian tradition.

It really makes you wonder if she believes that by her over sexualisation and other outrages behaviour means that she believes she is a “saint”. Kind of ironic. Her uniting with the Christian tradition to her might mean to “better” society by telling everyone it’s okay to let completely loose and let the monster inside of you escape.

Completely crazy? Yes. Completely wrong? Maybe so. One thing for sure is that Lady Gaga won’t be slowing down anytime soon.



Xo,

Y

A Little Blood Never Hurt Anyone



This week’s lecture made me reminisce back to the first encounter I had with monsters. When “Interview with a Vampire” came out I was extremely young and my older sisters rented it one night and watched it in our basement. I still remember watching the first bite Tom Cruise took on a human and my giant scream that consequently woke my parents up thinking that something horrible had occurred. For years after Vampires had been my biggest fear, until Buffy came along. Buffy the Vampire Slayer quickly became my favourite show and I couldn’t miss an episode. I don’t know what it was that drew me in, but it was a damn good show. What was interesting was how I lost any fear I had for vampires, monsters and any other demonic creature. I quickly found myself falling for the character of Spike versus Angel. This seems to be a pattern for me in vampire shows as I would take Damon over Stefan in The Vampire Diaries and Eric over Bill in True Blood. Girls have fallen for the bad boy for generations so putting the heroine female lead with a vampire; the ultimate demon seemed to fit perfectly.

What I agreed with completely this week was when Prof Harris discussed how these demons struggle between goodness versus evil which is something all of us do every day.  Vampires never chose to be this way and what’s interesting is how they once were and in some cases still are God fearing, Christian individuals. In most vampire shows, the good vampires hate themselves because they know that they are evil creatures who will never see the light of heaven. The fact that they carry this guilt around makes them vulnerable and appealing to viewers everywhere. It forces people to look at their own faults, mistakes and “sins” and reflect on their own fate. What is funny about the good vampire versus the bad vampire in each show or movie is that it is usually “the bad vampire” who was actually the better and kinder human and they become these monsters once they turn into vampires because they are so angry at what they are and can’t think back to a time when they were good because it hurts too much.  

If you think about it, we all have monster type of instincts in us. If you bring it back to last week’s lecture about violence, how are these human beings who are killing others any better than the vampires drinking people’s blood and zombies eating people’s brains? Difference is that we are human beings who aren’t programmed to do those things, but they had no choice but to be made into these evil beings.

We need to look at our actions and choices a little more carefully because in essence we all started out as innocent beings.


So where is the line between good and evil? Who are the real monsters? Us or them.

Xo,

Y