Useless Stuff

I cleaned out my room today.  It was painful to realize that I have a lot of stuff, and it’s hard just thinking about all that money I wasted on some of the things I now own.  So much useless junk I only used two or three times then set on a shelf to collect dust.  Then there are the old Happy Birthday cards and Christmas cards lying around.  I read about twenty or so today that all said such nice things.   I never wrote anything back to anyone.  I regret that. 

But enough of this depressing nostalgia, I won’t spend my spring break loathing in regret! I refuse!  From now on Joseph M. Chiavaro is going to enjoy his break!  Time to have some fun with this Nerf bow and arrow I got when I was ten and shoot at my old batman action figures.  NANANANANANANANANANA SPRING BREAK!

 

Life Insurance

Tuesday is here and I’m spending the day with my Mom at work helping her sell all that Northwestern Mutual life insurance that has fed me since I was ten or so.  It’s funny when think that you owe a large portion of life experience to the sales your Mom makes.  I’m in college because she worked incredibly hard to sell people this insurance. Just wanted to stop and take a moment to be thankful for that, nothing more.    

Peace Out Hipsterz

Spring break starts today!  It's the time to go home where you can eat wholesome meals and watch the news on a daily basis (unless your parents kicked you out for good). Too much work to get done to be a couch potato, so maybe it’s not a break for me.  Regardless, I hope anyone in school at the moment that has nine days off enjoys their break!

Snoop Lion

Change is a wonderful thing, especially for Snoop Dogg.  While we all used to love the man who rapped about shooting undercover cops and such, it seems he’s really growing up.  After hearing the full version of No Guns Allowed, one of the songs off of his upcoming album Reincarnated, it is clear that he’s really done a 180 in his lyrical content.  The song sends a message about nonviolence and paying attention to the important things in life other than money.  It’s clear why Snoop had to change his name after hearing his new music.  We could not handle putting this sound up against something like Vato (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXWFqxKU2qA), it just would frustrate us and not make sense. Drake also puts in a nice verse in the song in memory of those who died in a shooting at a block party in Toronto.

 No Guns Allowed, enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7MH_B1RzN4

Eighty Five

Eighty five…  Grade wise, what does an eighty five say about your work?  Is it bad?  Is it good? Is it okay? Is it amazing?  Does it cause you to go crazy and freak out about your grades or does it fill you with a sense of satisfaction.  Grades are something that obviously distinguishes between whether you know something or you don’t.  But eighty five is the cut off point for that easy distinction.  With such a grade you could have any attitude towards it that you want and still have another person feel completely the opposite about it.  Any grade higher or lower than that simply doesn’t do the same.  My opinion is that It seems to come down to standards.  People who expect too much of themselves call an eighty five a blunder.  People who expect very little of themselves consider the eighty five a pretty sweet grade.  the eigthy five brings about a different feeling in all of us. 

And so with this eighty five I got on my colloquium paper I say WOOOHOOOO, GOD DAMMIT, YES, NO, SWEEEEEEET, FML!

NEW JT! Don't Hold The Wall!

Slaughterhouse-Five

Killed a midterm this morning; I made my 100^th post yesterday; spring breaks approaching; and I’m cruising down the freeway of life! Taking big breaths of oxygen and whatever else is in the air and just enjoying it. 

On a darker note however, I finished the book Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut.  Apart from the fact that it was brilliantly written, the themes and scenarios that make up the book are dreadfully dark.  Vonnegut tries to explain what happened in the bombing of Dresden where hundreds of thousands of Germans died.  He uses time travel, aliens, vibrating beds, crashing planes, and so many other unconventional things to get at the root of the problem of people rationalizing death and destruction.  He puts one death next to thousands and demands (sometimes not even human deaths) that we put them on the same level using the ominous expression “So it goes” to resolve the rationalization of every demise.   Though it’s a brief review and only covers a small portion of this fantastic work of literature I hope I did not miss the mark in my understanding. 

Coding

Today I happened to run into my friend in the library.  We were both looking at job opportunities for an upcoming job fair and we noticed that a lot of the jobs required skills such as coding.  So being the ignorant tech fail that I am I asked her how do I do it?

A good hour of research later I am upset, and excited at the same time.  Upset that I was never taught this in school, and excited that now I know about a new way to expand my creative knowledge.   From what I’ve heard it’s basically just writing to your computer exactly what you want it to do.  It looks intimidating but I want to learn more about it.  

If you are reading this and shaking your head thinking “Joe you idiot, how can you have a blog and not know the first thing about coding” you have every right to do so.  That being said I hope someday I may defeat this ignorance and show all those internet savvy folks that there is one less person to shake their head at.

Watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAwq1K9oMPA

SPEECH

Public speaking is an intimidating thing.  Today I gave a public speech on behalf of my college SUNY Purchase on their learning community program.  I prepared and practiced and made my speech super fly, but once I got on that podium my confidence twitched.  In a moment that seemed to happen outside of time an epic war took place where my doubt laid siege to my confidence.   The result was a quick yet powerful emotion.  Fortunately, I gave a fantastic speech according to my friend in the admissions building Mrs. Washington so in the end the siege failed.  I just want to recognize this moment and share a feeling that I think I’m not alone in well…feeling.  I think a lot of people my age struggle with winning this battle.  You could say you just need more confidence but if that were the case for everyone we would all be a lot more outspoken.

Yelawolf has confidence all day long on this new mix tape!  Trunk Musik Returns!

Three songs off the mix righter there for you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPLSlbDTd7Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sq8tm67DY2M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PVRxL2KtBs

A New Hope...I Mean Pope!

And we can build this dream together!!!!
Standing strong forever!!!
Nothing's gonna stop us nooooooooow!!!!

 

I don't care what anyone says about the 80s this song will always be amazing!

 

Well enough of that I’m sure your Thursday is full of crazy and wild excitement! I mean can you believe it?! There’s a new hope!  I mean “Pope” (Someone please make that a meme)!  I bet you’re all probably on cloud nine right now jumping up and down celebrating such a tremendous…wait, what?  Oh… you don’t care?  But he’s the new Po…I don’t care if you want real news!  This is twenty four hour Pope coverage time people!  We need to know what he’s doing every second of the day!  If he takes a dump we need to see it on national TV!  Enough with your apathy and just jump on the Pope train and remind yourself that you were a Christian once!  Or not…  Most likely not…  But who cares it’s the Pope!

Problem Questions

A fight almost broke out in my English Renaissance class today over whether Tim Burton makes good films or not.  It almost got out of control until we all realized that Tim Burton has no fraking reason to be mentioned in an English Renaissance Class!  Everyone has one class that has some strange person who says strange things all the time.  Throughout the course of said people’s questions or statements I just cringe and try not to look. In all honesty I’m sure they’ve got some sort of amazing thought going through their head that transcends anything in the discussion.  That being said if you are one of these people please recognize you have some difficulty in conveying your opinions to the public (that does not have anything to do with a Tim Burton comparison) and write down what you are going to say beforehand.   If your idea seems to make perfect grammatical sense and fits into the discussion after a good five minutes of review, then and only then raise your hand. 

I was that person once, but I fixed that problem through this process and I hope you do too internet.

Writing Is...

Writing is many things.  One of those is an outlet to processing of your thoughts.  When you have to think really hard about something, write about it.  When something is stuck on your mind and you can’t get it out, write about it. When you have neither of these things, write about writing about stuff.  Thank you internet and have a wonderful weekend.

Don't go and write a song like this though. 

 

Surrounded By Smarter People Maybe?

I’m sure anyone will agree that we need to become and be surrounded by smarter people.  That being said, it has come to my attention that many people in this current first world country of mine lack access to scholarly articles. Instead, they are being constantly exposed to unscholarly ones such as magazines, tabloids, and the dreaded yahoo newsfeed.  With the use of the internet, databases of academic content have become so much more available and not available at the same time.  While you may peruse a forest of academia at a mere whim, if you do not pay to have access to these databases you are essentially cut off from the such knowledge.  You cannot develop a voice because the knowledge is only meant for people who can pay for it.  Terrible yes, but that isn’t even the worst part.  If I wrote something worthy of such a database, (scholarly) I could not view my own work on that database for free.  I would still have to pay for it.

                Fortunately I’m lucky enough to go to a college where databases are supplied.   After college however, will I still be able to function at a hundred percent without the tools I need?   Perhaps I’ll find a way.  I’d either have find money to pay for it, jump over way more hurdles than necessary, or pirate it.  All three of these options are unacceptable to me and should be to you as well no matter what you wish to study.  I hope you agree with me internet. Maybe someday we can all be smarter people.

The World is a Mess!

As I move into an age that is considered by society to be A-D-U-L-T hood, my generation it seems is to begin taking charge of this whole mess of things we call life.  Let's see... what do we have to deal with?

Meteors! 

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-02-15/world/37114887_1_meteor-video-footage-conspiracy-theories

Deadly Bacteria!

http://health.yahoo.net/news/s/nm/nightmare-bacteria-shrugging-off-antibiotics-on-rise-in-u-s

Tina Fey's Swimsuit Nightmare!

http://omg.yahoo.com/blogs/celeb-news/tina-fey-bathing-suit-photo-nightmare-came-true-233341052.html

I'll stop right here. Hopefully, if I close my eyes this will all go away. Good luck world, I'm just a literature major.  Unless I can read the world peace out of a book I'll be of little use.

Happy Birthday To Me

Pretty much what happened: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Y34jC4I1m70

Chicken Parmesan

Whenever I eat my school’s chicken parmesan sandwich I eat it alone. It’s a time to think really, just the sandwich, me and my thoughts.  After these meals I tend to walk away from them feeling that I have really contemplated some of the most important questions about life.  Whatever it may be I constantly think about it all day.  For example, the other day I was taking a big ol bite and suddenly thought “why do we buy plane tickets when we can just make wings out of our money” and “instead of contracting STDs or illness, why don’t humans contract happiness” and lastly, “is Aunt Jemima the name of the brand of syrup, or is the syrup my aunt long lost Aunt Jemima?”   I just needed to get this of my chest.  Do with it what you will internet.  

 

SWAG

It’s a swag-tastic Friday full of swag.  It’s on the walls under my bed on my desk and all over me.  You know why?  It’s because I’m rocking’ a tie.  Yes, a black tie with a nice dress shirt, dress pants, and dress shoes.  I’m so dressed you’d think I was wearing a dress, but I wouldn’t wear a dress because a guy in a dress has no swag and you know I’m all about that swag life.  Now I’m going to go read a book and possibly go to a nice dinner, maybe order the fettucini alfredo because I like that white sauce.    If you’re a home doing nothing on this Friday night, I must inform you that you have no swag.

Now don't that look good!  Maybe get some breadsticks with it.