Little Brother is one of the better novels I have ever read! I absolutely loved it. I found myself reading ahead of the specified schedule and couldn't stop reading my computer screen to see what would happen next. This is not your typical heroic story that we all usually think of, but in my opinion, it is definitely considered one in my eyes. This boy, at 18 years of age, fights against the government and builds an underground network of gamers and hackers to fight against the unjust ways of the Homeland Security. He has absolutely no sense about him and that's what I love about it! He doesn't care whether he is being dumb or losing his friends. All he cares about is fulfilling his promise of making the DHS pay. In the end, I predicted that he would get caught and would be killed by the DHS. To my surprise, he was actually rescued by the journalist and the SWAT team and survived this horrible situation that he was in, which was certain death by torture. The only thing that made me a little angry/frustrated about was that the government let the short-haired woman go, who was Marcus's main fear throughout the book. I loved how the story ended though, with him and Ange being all close, knowing that everything would be okay and they had made it out alive and unscaved. That rounded out the progression of them finding eachother in my eyes. Great book!

I have been reading Little Brother and I absolutely love it!! I am already through chapter 13 and I'm continuing to move farther and farther into the book. For those of you who have not got that far or even started the book, I'll give you a slight summary of my ideas and opinions. 1. There is no way the main character can continue fighting against the government and get away with it. He has already almost been caught quite a few times and he is now trying to set up an underground clan if you will. I don't know how long he can keep this up, but I'm definitely cheering for him. I don't think he will "change the world" with his intense bravery and adamant nature, but I do think he can get his point across and can maybe show the Homeland Security that they need to back off some. 2. My boy has got himself a girl, and I'm interested to see how their relationship progresses and if the Xnet comes between them, just like it did with all his gaming friends. 3. If you haven't read or aren't very far, catch up because this book is legit!

Well, I have already read through 4 chapters in Little Brother and I really love the book. I have never been a big fan of surveillance topics and such and wasn't really looking forward to reading a book based on the idea of surveillance. I have always found the subject to be quite boring, but then I started to read this book and I was instantly entertained. Little Brother is amazing! It has some extremely cool gadgets and genius plans in it, along with a terrorist attack and basically torture along with that. It is interesting to see how American's treat other people from other countries because as a citizen, we don't see and comprehend the awful things that go on behind the scenes. Our soldiers were interrogating this guy who was only playing a game and now he is suspected of being a terrorist. I honestly don't know why the boy just didn't tell them that he was playing a game so he could have got free a long time before he did. Also his stubbornness and sarcasm didn't help his cause at all, which was stupid for him to use. This book makes you think about surveillance and how they can watch your every move and know where you are, what you're doing, and when you're doing it at all times! This is a scary thought and it makes me wonder how much privacy we actually have as American citizens.

So after class today, I came to the conclusion that my paper was pretty dang good, except for one aspect of it. I saw that I needed to include a comparison or analogue in it to make it even better, so that is exactly what I did. During class, my group studied the legalization of marijuana, which is already my topic of choice. We went to some websites and found some good ones, relating to the anti-legalization of marijuana. I found a website today that I put into my paper about the comparison of the pros and cons of marijuana use, by someone for it and someone against it. I feel like this small addition into my paper was well integrated and it helped someone see both sides of the topic, which is good because when they choose my side, my paper will have done it's job with great effectiveness. Oh and by the way, since no one believes me haha, I seriously have never smoked anything! Don't know why people don't believe me, but they don't.

As you all know, we have our contextual analysis paper due next Thursday. Since my schedule is completely brutal, I have already started on my paper and written three pages. My topic is the legalization of marijuana. This topic relates to the political, economical, social, environmental, healthful, historical, and cultural of both the past and the present, as well as the future to come. Since I do not know a lot about marijuana, I did a bunch of research and found some extremely interesting facts that I will be able to incorporate into my paper. It is crazy how so many people misinterpret marijuana and its uses and effects on so many things, such as the individual and the environment. I found out that marijuana was basically only made illegal because of racism against the Mexicans. Also I found out that weed was used in cloth, food, medicine, and many other cultural events and items. This topic is so interesting because people don't know all the facts about this plant, so they just assume it is awful because it is illegal for the time being. Marijuana has actually been legal 99% of the time in which it has been known to man and I believe that within our lifetime, we will see marijuana become legalized.

Today was one of my favorite days to date in english class. It was a very fun, sort of laid back day, but it was also extremely informal about our upcoming paper we will have to write, which is a contextual analysis. Watching those movie trailers helped me understand the why the director made the trailers that way and how they were effective, whether it was a contrast of the original movie's intent or the way the lighting, sounds, and music played a different role in intriguing the audience to go see their movie. Personally, my favorite one was the Alien one, which the people who made that website also agreed was the best. The effectiveness of the different images going back and forth, the music that made the clip more interesting, the lighting that made everything dark and suspicious feeling, and the transition of the title were all very effective, genius ways to make the movie trailer interesting and make people want to go see that movie. Also I really liked the unbreakable trailer because that definitely caught my attention and made me want to go see the movie because of the cool story plot that the trailer portrayed. I am interested in seeing how my paper turns out because I'm not sure if I have written a contextual analysis before, and if I have, it has been a while, so I'm looking forward to finding my topic and starting my essay.

Alright, well today in class we finished up the movie Children of Men. I would first like to say that I really enjoyed the movie and found it very controversial. The ending left me wanting more and wanting to know what happened with the girl and the baby, but I guess that was the director's intention. This movie had conflicts left and right, beginning with the social and cultural conflict, which was portrayed through out the entire film. It is funny how when things start going downhill, everyone loses their cool and freaks out! Take this recession for example. As soon as the stock market crashed and people started losing their money, they thought the world was coming to an end. Everyone started losing their collectiveness and everything seems kind of chaotic now. Same with this movie. There is no fertility in the world and people started bombing public areas and brought about an uprising. Fertility had the possibility of coming back, just like the economy, but people didn't wait long enough. We all want instant gratification these days and that's unrealistic. Yes, it had been 18 years since the last kid was born, but someone did get pregnant did they not? Okay, so if they had just waited and not shit a brick, people would have realized that this girl was having a baby and that there was hope in the future. This movie correlates to our situation here in America because in both scenarios, when something goes wrong, all hell breaks lose.