What Does It Mean To Be "Human"

Power, how has power been used so far? How have all civilizations let one person have to much power? How has America not realized power kills a civilization? Well, these questions and more can not be answered in one simple sentence or even in a essay by one person. It all depends on what the writer or reader believes because there is no right answer like in math. But ones I see more often then others are on economics, power, greed, diversity, and some others. Now to me power sums up all humanity.

America now and somewhat into the past are very easy examples. Now America, how come America, well first off in the current market we live in all of us know the problems we have and it can be explained pretty easily. Also with the government  being who they are you can see most of them do not care about making America better even though they say they do. But some how we still fall for it year after year after year, what they truly care about is power and money. Which brings me to my first point, how everyone has such a lust for both. And I mean everyone, but some of us know we will not be able to have either, while others are born with both or close enough to get both. I mean just look at who our past presidents were Bush, Clinton, Bush, Nixon, and the list goes on. Clinton I know in college met his wife and they had a plan that Bill Clinton would become president and then have Hillary Clinton run the next year and have her become president. Next is how money is killing us because with every person wanting a get rich scam so many people are losing money and the government  is getting all of it. I mean 1% of America's population controls 70% of our wealth and the number keeps growing. And it seems like no one notices it and if they do they can't do anything about it.

Now past civilizations, each civilization had there rise and fall and some falls were so horrible the civilization fell completely to the ground. Such as Rome, Mesopotamia, Greek, Aztecs, Incas, Mayan, and many other civilizations that thrived and some how died down by the same problems we are experiencing now. And most likely outside the government everyone realizes it. To me this is the second depression we are going through. Now how is America following the same pattern of past civilizations? Well, what we are doing is giving to much power to one person and that person is using the power for nothing, but their own personal gain. I mean just look at Dick Chany or George Bush. Other things we are following are not letting the regular people completely choose who we want to run our government. A easy example of this was during the first Bush election were Bush's brother rigged the vote in Florida. The last thing I notice is everyone wants to be rich and powerful it is a proven fact, but a big difference you see is many people know they will never reach that. Maybe because they never were born with a lot of money or they didn't find a job that gave them the amount of money that was needed. While we have the government officials that were born into very wealthy families (at least most of them were).

To me a easy question to ask is why does everyone want to get rich, but get rich without working hard. Well it is kinda easy to answer everyone knows that life takes a lot of work and to a lot people that is scary and who can blame them. But also many people realize to reach the goal of being high class you must work and work and work your butt off. Now more on the people that do not work hard, so say some how one of these people some how won the lottery well this person would become even more lazy and would still want more money to become even more powerful. Now this is a reason that these people never get this money because they can not handle it, like a lot of us can not either. Yet everyone still does not care they want to have the biggest house, the best car, and the best stuff.

The last question I have is how come people with money can bend the rules and change laws. Well because they have power and no body cares. Like with the law on taxes, so to everyone that works for a living we have to pay more money to people who already have money, uh what. And for the people who have all the money in the world they pay less and less, why? Why does our government do that? Well to them it makes sense because they want more and they can't take it from other rich people so they decided to take it from lower class people. And this is what power will do to you, you do not care about other people you just care about the money. So I'm going to as you why you think America chose to be this way. Well why? How could no one realize that America is driving it self into the ground. That America will one day become like the other civilizations that disappeared because power and greed took over. That America one day will not be the strongest and the government will then put all the money we have left into the army (as if we had any left) and the big problem with that is where are they going to get the money? How are they going to get the money? Well they won't plain and simple.   

In the end we can all say the government are making the problems we currently have, well that is true only to some extent. What many people do not think about is we brought these people into office. We let them ruin America financially with their attempts to gain more money and power. So this is where everyone must remember the saying "with great power comes great responsibility."

46 found dead this week in Veracruz

At least 11 more bodies have been found dumped around the Mexican city of Veracruz

 In the Mexican City of Veracruz a total of 46 bodies of citizens have been found. 35 of them two days ago and 11 today. The 35 bodies found on Tuesday were warnings from the drug group the Zetas (Mexico's most wanted gang) When the bodies were found they were stacked upon each other giving the impression of torture. Body parts were also found. Found in the video on the site Al Jazeera states cameras were not allowed inside, but from what they were told was most bodies were suffocated to death. On the bodies found today nothing has been released about how they were murdered. Last family members refused to speak to the cameras. This also seems to be a reaction to what had happened a month before when threw a grenade into a heavy populated area killing one person.

Why this is very important to me is no one should ever lose their life for a reason that has no meaning. Also Veracruz has been a very peaceful city till this and now it seems drugs are taking control of the people. Now to everyone else this may not be as important because this is not America, but it does not matter these things happen here all the time, but since it happens so often here such a small amount might not matter. Last since America is not involved with this our government will never care.

Response to Christian's Post

This is possibly the biggest sports event I have ever participated in.

Well, dude cool that your finally playing in one and it is defiantly the biggest thing in the football season here. But really Cayland can't play because of a single test, that is such bullshit. But whatever, so I got one question though. You say you got faith in your team which is good, but your say your going to lose. Why dude, I know that our JV team is really good this season, but Encinal can not be that good. Like you said the Varsity is good, but their JV has to suck too. But I got to agree with you about our Varsity losing, i mean we got good players, but does not seem like we have good coaching or play calling, which is probably why we have not done so good the past few years.

Also it sucks you messed up your shoulder because you won't be able to do anything with a bad shoulder. I mean not enough football and no pitching for baseball. And this season you could have pitched a whole lot. But dude I say do not finish off the season mainly because one little mess up and your done for dude.  But if you really want to go ahead. One I do not understand about this though is how did you mess it up that bad. And also you can't play defense, but you can play offense. Like can;t each mess up your shoulder worse so why take the risk dude. But hey that is where I am coming from. I wish you best getting better.

Operation Flashpoint Red River

Well this game defiantly deserves more credit than it is getting. First off the game is not COD so for any gamers than only play COD, Battlefield, or Halo just get out here. Reason why is because this is not a run and gun game this is straight strategy. What I mean is you can't go running in like a crazy man getting one kill then dyeing and coming back to life in a few seconds. Now I'm not trying to make COD, Battlefield, and Halo seem like a bad games because I play them and I really like then. But I also like a change in what I am playing.

Now the gameplay of Flashpoint is very nice, yes it has its points when you just want to break your system, but if you really try you can get by it. So what the story line is you are a marine in the state of war verse terrorists (not a shocker). You command your Bravo fire team of 4 and with help from Alpha and Charlie. In your team you go out and flank enemies and head straight into the fire fight, while Alpha and Charlie take the long range shots for you. Classes you have are pretty basic, you got the sniping, mid range, short range guns. Nothing to amazing but still fun. I also think it is important to know that it can take 1 to 2 shots to kill someone while it takes about 2 to 3 shots to kill you mainly because you have a flak jacket on. How you also improve your guns with better scopes, silencers, and more is like COD in a way, by leveling the class up. Im not going to go into much more detail, if you want to know more look it up on google or just by the game.

In the end though I give this game a 8.5 because it has pretty good graphics, but not amazing. Also the gameplay can have lags. And your team can be dumb at times, but don't let that fool you it is still a good game.

In a Darkened Room

You're sitting in your large and in charge living room on you're amazingly soft green couch and your best friend is sitting on the other side of the room on your red chair. When suddenly a loud thunder storm rolls over and cuts the power. Now what?
"Dude, what are we going to do now?"
"Well, we got to get the white candles from the kitchen and the highly flammable matches here in the living room."
"Ok, easy enough. I'll get the matches and you get the candles. Now where are they?"
"Where are what?"
"The matches dumb ass."
"I don't know, you have to find them yourself."
"Great, just great."
"Ok, I'm going to go to the kitchen now."
"Fine, have fun with that."

As you make your way down the long dark hall way into your kitchen filled with knives that you can't even see you feel an uneasiness that makes you feel like there is someone else right behind you. You know it can't be your friend, so who could it be. Maybe a ghost that died in this hallway, or a lunatic that escaped from jail, cut the power, and is running around with a knife wanting to kill you.
"Hold up, why am I thinking this?"

You clear your head and continue your long walk. You've gone a few steps before you trip on your very expensive rug made from the finest material money can buy. You fall flat on your face giving yourself a horrible bloody nose. You don't really care very much and you head forward inching your way across the rug wearing nothing but your old socks. As you come to the end of the hall way you feel for the door way, but as your arms swing you hit a vase, not just any vase a blue vase from your mom's birthday party, a blue vase that you bought for a very large sum of money. After the vase broke on your solid white tile floor you hear a sound from the other room.
"Dude, what was that."
"No worries, it was just a vase I got my mom."

As you try to tip toe your way around the sharp pointy glass you can't help wondering, how far did the glass fly. The floor is not that slippery so you think you have gone far enough, but as you put your foot on the ground one stray piece happened to be right there. You step on it and jump into the air screaming like a little girl wanting to see Justin Bieber.
"Holy shit, that hurts. Crap now what do I do."
You slowly take off your blood soaked sock and try to pull out this tiny piece of vase. Sadly you can not get a hold of it. Your stand back up and continue your walk through the seeming harmless kitchen. You try and walk normally, but as you put your foot down and pain rockets from your foot to your brain and throughout your body. So instead of walking you start limping along holding on to the cold counter tops that feel like ice. As you feel around your elbow bumps into a large dark object.
"Yes, the fridge. Now the candles are right above it."
You somehow get on the tip of your toes with no pain and grab the dusty candles.
"Hey, I got the candles. Did you find the matches?"
"Well, how do I put this -- the matches found me."
"What the hell does that mean?!"
"Dude just RUN!"
As you stand there you can't put your head around what your friend was saying, until you hear a scream and not just any scream a bloody murder scream. Right away you start making your way to your back yard and while limping along you hear a dark mysterious voice.
"It is just you and me now."
You come to the glass door of your back yard and realize it is locked.
"Crap, crap, crap."

As you try to do anything to get the door open you hear pictures, chairs, and tables all falling over. You finally decided to just jump through the thin glass that is between you and freedom. You take a few cautious steps backwards and run forward with all your strength, you jump and out you go. You hit the ground hard, landing exactly on your knee cap shattering it completely. As you lay there you feel only the pain of your knee that feels so horrible you can not even move and also the pain of sharp glass stuck in your body. At this moment you are bleeding so horribly it could make a vampire sick of blood. As you lay there you know there is nothing you can do, but take it like a man and hope it is a quick painless death. Now a figure shows up from the darkness holding the blood soaked axe from your fireplace that this man used to kill your best friend. As you close your eyes and prepare for impact, you see your short, but fulfilling life flash before your eyes. And as you hear a slash coming for you, you know it is...
"Wow that was one crappy ass movie. Don't you think?"

Response to Keelan's Post

Last week I was writing about how my football practice was going hard and bad; this week was no exception.

Keenlan, I know that feeling dude, it is tough to keep play when your body wont let you and you know that you have to keep going. But hey it will only last for a couple of days then your be fine, but also in the mean time take it easy and do not push it to much. Also reason why i know this feeling is because I am have back problems right now to and it does not help doing something with major pain.

Also since you had a good game I think that is already something to keep you going knowing that all this work and effort will pay off in the main run. And you should have never been to worried going to practice thinking that something bad is going to happen if you tell your coach that you might not be able to go 100%. Not telling him is actually worse mainly because you could injure yourself so badly you wont play for half or even the entire season, there is no way to tell. But hey when you finally did tell your coach and he understood that probably took a load off your mind and relaxed your body knowing you would not be penalized for something you can not control. One thing that would be interesting to know is how did you feel sitting there watching other people play knowing that you were not being apart of the action going on on the field.

Best of luck getting better.

US citizens impresioned for being accused spies

Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal were arrested in July 2009 near Iran's border with Iraq, where they say they were hiking in the mountains. They were sentenced last month to eight years in prison on spying charges.

Back in 2009 hikers Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal were hiking on the boarder of Iraq and Iran when they were arrested for charges of spying. According to Obama at the time when they working in the middle east they had no information of US intelligence. Right now according to NBC the men will be released in two days, but now according to their lawyer it will not be till the bail is paid, bail which is $500,000 each. Also at the time when they were captured there was a third man, Sarah Shourd, with them, but he was released September of 2010 for reasons unknown. So according to the hikers themselves they crossed the unmarked boarder by mistake and were then taken into custody. Bauer and Fattal, who share a cell in Tehran's Evin prison, were convicted at a trial held behind closed doors in August.

To me this is very important mainly because these are innocent people that have been convicted of a false crime and to our government it does not seem matter. The reason why it does not is because if the government cared more these men would have been out of jail a long time ago. But no, the money that could have been used to get these men out of jail went to war. So America should ask it self why does money only be used for our army, yes we have the strongest in the world, but why would it matter if there are no one to serve in the army.

MW3

So Modern Warfare 3, like I said before is the continuing saga of COD and the continuing story of MW2. Modern Warfare 2 defiantly deserved the credibility it got by having one of the best story-lines, graphics, and online play of any COD game. So as we all know Black Ops was not as amazing as it was spouse to be, but it did still have its high points with a good story line and gun selection. So I think everyone knows that MW3 is going to be amazing you can just tell. But what I think a lot people do not know are what the differences b/w the Black Ops and MW3 will be, the gun selection of MW3, perk selection, and the online play. So I'm going to explain that now. So an easy difference in the 2 games are the graphics, the graphics are spouse to be amazing like MW2 and again show how amazing the series is. Next there is NO zombies, sorry if you liked it, but what they have instead is special ops (not much has been said about it though). So the gun selection has its positives and negatives. The negatives are not much official info has been released making the true very hard to know. The positives are they will be bringing some of our favorite guns back including:
Assault Riffles:
- ACR
- SCAR
- AK-47
- M4 (not official)
- M16
- CM901
- FAMAS (not official)
- G36
- MK14
- FAD
- FAL (not official)

Snipers:
- Barret .50
- L118A (L96)
- Dragunov
- AS50
- RSASS
- MSR

SMG's:
- Scorpian
- MP5
- UMP-45 (not official)
- P90 (not official)

Shotguns:
- Model 1887
- KSG
- AA12
- Striker

Pistols:
- MP412
- Walter P99
- P226 (not official)

Launchers:
- RPG

Perks:

- are in site liked above

Online Play:
now sorry but nothing has been shown for online the only thing are the maps and I don't really care about that that much so, if you are able to find anything about online play just comment. Thanks for reading.

Response to Ben's Post

it is very humbling and lets us know where we stand as of now, and what we have to do in order to be back on top by the end of the season.

Ben, I know what your talking about dude it is tough losing and especially to a team you should be beating, but remember dude it happens to the best of us and we can not control it in any way.  To me this is something that is the hardest part of the sport, but all of us go through it. It is good though that you know not every season starts off perfect and actually if you might have won that game you could have thought you guys do not need any work of what ever you guys would think. Like with us on baseball last year we started off 9 and 0 and probably by about the 8th win we all started getting pretty cocky and because of that  probably started losing focus at practice and only went threw the motions without think if were doing everything right. So in the end we lost our focus before a game and it kicked us in the butts we started off bad and that put us down and we did act the way we should have till the last 3 out of the game getting our winning run to the plate, but still losing.


The only thing is just because you have been the A.C.C.A.L Champions does not mean you need to start off amazing because you can not always do amazing.

Stock Downfall

US stocks tumbled more than two per cent after the top German official at the European Central Bank stepped down.

Well, this stuck out to me because first this is the country you live in and also I know that most countries economy are ran by americas and with americas dropping day by day so is every other countries. Also this is interesting because I also know america is having many problems with just everything and now to even hear that our economy dropping lower and lower it brings a sad feeling to you knowing this is where you live. 

What they show in the article is the big declines in huge companies such as Mcdonalds dropping 4.1 percent in sales in Japan and also drops in build of new products in the US. Another big drop is in Bank of America with 40,000 jobs being lost. Other drops are 1.5 billion dollars in oversea profits due to Obama not addressing proposals in his last speech. Another interesting drop is with ECB now buying bonds to stop borrowing money from euro zone members. Also meeting of financial chiefs of 7 wealthy nations was held in France in response to the euro zone debt crisis threatening the world economy. There is also drops in stocks in Xerox falling 5.5 percent. Last the Nasdaq Composite Index fell 61.15 points or 2.42 per cent.

All in all, the falling of the economy is just not affecting us it is affecting almost everyone around the world.

Crazy Christmas

            Well where should I start this Christmas is just going to be great, there are going to be so many video games coming out and each one is going to be a hit especially MW3, Batman Arkham City, Ghost Recon, Battlefield Bad Company 3, Uncharted 3, Ace Combat, The Metal Gear Solid HD Collection, God of War PSP Collection, and Assassins Creed. Now which do you want? Have you already pre-ordered one? If not you do.

             So, MW3 the continuing saga of Call Of Duty and the continuing story of MW2. MW3 which is spouse to be better than Black Ops due to the improvements in graphics and gameplay especially in online play, now will it be better I do not know, but i got a pretty good feeling it will be. Batman Arkham City the sequel to Batman Arkham Asylum (Game of the Year), now takes place in a new city called well Arkham City, which is a free roaming city instead of just a small bit of land. But from what I know the gameplay is going to be about the same with even more special moves that allow you to take out more enemies. Ghost Recon has defiantly lost its credibility, but I think it will get all of its fans back now and even new ones. The biggest thing about this game is the ability to either go stealthy of go in guns firing like COD, it is the players choice. Although I have the feeling that most fans will go stealthy like the original ones, but this will even add more fun by turing invisible and taking out enemies. Battle Field Bad Company 3 is a game I have not looked much into, I do know that this spouse to be even more amazing than the last game due to gameplay and online features. Uncharted 3 now the third game in the series and defiantly a fun one this game is spouse to be continuing the story of the past games with more action and fun, will it have all of them I don't know. Ace Combat is defiantly a fun game to play and now its on the big systems which is huge for fans and from what I have seen they are adding things that have not been in any of the original ones and adding better kill cams. Metal Gear Solid is defiantly one of the best series in all of video game history and now they are bringing 3 of their best games on the big systems. The box will included Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3, and Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker. Now last is the God of War collection which are both of the PSP games Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta. Each is not as long as the original games, but each give some good action.

             Every game I have just lightly talked about are games I am getting and I recommend them to any good gamer. If you are not sure which ones to get yet I will be blogging about each separate game giving more detail about each.

About Me

           Hi, my name is Thomas Johnson or also know as TJ and I am currently living here in the bay area going to good old Alameda High School. Probably the first thing any person should know about me is that I am very athletic, I play baseball year round on both a travel ball team and my high school JV team. Also  I love to run, of course not as much as baseball, but still very much. What is interesting about that is I have been to countless times to go out for cross country, but I don't have the time. So before coming into this school year I had played baseball all summer long for the HF gamers. Over the summer I mostly pitched, and off all the innings and games i pitched two were complete games. One being a loss and the other being a win. In the loss I went all the way into the 8th inning giving up 3 runs, we lost in the 9th 4-3 though. In the second one I went 7 innings giving up 1 run and getting the win with a 3-1 score. After the summer ended I had to find a new team because of problems with the other. The problems were I had been told for about a year by the owner I threw to slow to pitch any further in baseball, even though i had become one of the most consistent pitchers on the team. But once I started to hit the speed I needed I then began to get told my curve ball is to slow for my size. To the owner I had to be at least 6-5 and throwing 95 to throw this pitch, which was completely dumb because it is not necessary. I mean look at Tim Lincecum he throws the same pitch and he is 5-10. So the team I found was called the TI Pirates. Coming on to the team I knew they did not mind that I didn't throw as hard as everyone else, they said they could work on that. And so far it has been great I have thrown 9 innings in 5 games giving up 0 runs, 2 strikeouts 2 walks, 6 hits, and one hit batter. Hitting I have gone 4 for 8 with 4 singles, 4 rbis, 3 runs, and one strikeout, On the bases I have 6 stolen bases. And fielding I have played 12 innings in right making 0 errors so far.
          Now in school, so far it has been very easy and smooth because i have great teachers. Also this is the first year in a long time I'm interested in English. I think mostly because I have had some bad teachers, especially in 7th grade with my core teacher. This teacher would do such mean things to students she actually made 5 different girls cry over the year. What she did to me was she would tell me nothing is wrong with my essay and then tear it apart, like there was no tomorrow. But that is old news, now we just got the future to look forward to.
          So onto my writing goals for this year, I don't have many, I still have a few. The one most important to me is I really need more help in keeping readers interested in my writing and also myself. The one other thing I have is help analyzing quotes especially in Shakespeare. Now will I learn all these things I don't know.