Currency Corruption

The recession hit George's family hard. George helped around the family farm every summer in order to make some money for his pocket, but organic food was expensive, and even in Vermont the need for it was not a booming market due to how expensive organics are. This year his dad told him that money was short, and that there was not enough work for him at the family farm.

George was not overly upset and applied for jobs in and around Montpelier, eventually getting the morning register job in the Montpelier Shaw's. Because George was getting a job outside of the family farm, he assumed that his summer would be open to hang with all his friends on the weekends. But when the first Saturday came George had to work at the farmers market in Montpelier.

It didn't seem fair that he would have to work for no money on his weekends as an eighteen year old, but his parents didn't seem to care. It wasn't just the first week either, every Saturday morning bright and early George would leave or many times he would leave his friends houses the night before, usually before it even struck midnight just to be home and well rested for the market the next day.

The recession had hurt George's family financially, but somehow him being told to get a job outside of the family business only meant more work for him, and less pay. During his last summer with many of his high school friends he had known for a better majority of his life George worked the hours of two jobs.

George now attends Northeastern College in Boston and because of the way there engineering program works will have his last summer home this coming summer. For his last summer he already knows he will have to get another job outside of the family. George's summer will probably consist of the overload of essentially two jobs much like his last summer.

Talking to George about how my pockets where nearly empty of the money I had made over the summer he told me how he was nearly broke himself. The only difference is because my family wasn't struggling financially I went out every night over the summer. And many days I would go straight from one friends to work and then to the next friends house without even going home, sometimes for entire weeks till my parents ordered me home.

Because of this financial crash partially caused by the actions of the banks giving loans without sufficient financial information about there clients, many families such as George's have gone through similar experience of increased work hours and stricter standards of living.   

Tosh.Awesome

Earlier this evening Daniel Tosh, most well known for Tosh.0, aired his new television show Daniel Tosh: Happy Thoughts on Comedy Central.  Tosh is well known for his extremely crude humor hitting on topics such as the child who was beheaded at Six Flags and of course his many jokes directed toward women, African Americans, and the Latino populations.

Happy Thoughts pushed the line between funny and just plain going to far, but for those who are not easily offended like myself Tosh proved that he was one of the funniest comedians out there.  Tosh quickly switched from one joke to the next, never pushing the limit of your attention span keeping his listeners entertained throughout.

Some of Tosh's better material were the jokes about the national anthem in America, the Mormon Church, and how he hates his girlfriend.  The national anthem is a one hit wonder that nobody wants to listen to Tosh pointed out, and if "his" country were to have a national anthem it would be thirty-nine minutes long just so if they ever won a gold medal the bronze and silver winners would have to sit there.  Tosh's Mormon Church joke pointed out that they spent thousands of dollars on adds so that gay marriage would not pass in California and it only worked because parents in California did not wanna actually talk to there kids.  And my personal favorite, the many jokes where Tosh pointed out his dislike for his girlfriend and joked about cheating on her because he believes that "you can't appreciate an eight unless you've been with a four."

I personally enjoyed the crude humor and national points of political argument that Tosh brought forth in his new show.  I'm looking forward to watching Tosh's new show every week and hope that it continues to keep its quality of humor, crude humor.



"My show's about bringing the troops home. That's the message. It's not obvious, but it's there. Bring the troops home tomorrow, and continue the war here. Because we owe it to our troops to let them sleep in their own beds with their families, wake up in the morning, have delicious breakfast, and drive to war. They can do it in Nebraska; we don't need that horrible state. That can be our field. Some of you are like, "Oh, that's not nice! Then, we wouldn't have any corn!" My SUV doesn't run on corn. Ethanol's a dream, and a dumb one." -Daniel Tosh

Ghost in our Mind

A Personal Essay

“I took it from my brothers room,” Charlie exclaimed. “This is supposed to be the best of the best, the scariest of all the films!” He was holding the movie box for the Exorcist, what was said to be the scariest film of the time.

“I dunno about this, cant we watch something else? I don't really like horror movies.” I replied. “Remember the story your parents were telling us? The one about the builder who committed suicide while building your house? My parents said the story was true. They said it was in the paper. That he hit himself repeatedly with the back side of a hammer until he bled out in the basement. Maybe its bad karma.”

“Stop being such a wimp, its just a movie,” Charlie replied. Making it very clear that my eleven year old man hood was at stake with watching this movie. ”I know, lets watch it in the basement! That will make it really scary.” Clearly my plea had not helping with the situation. The only thing worse then watching a horror film I did not want to watch was to watch it in a basement that we had spent our youth making ghost stories up about.

“If we watch this in the basement then I do not want to hear anything about this later. No matter what man,” I said as I made a safety net to make sure whatever happened did not end up becoming lunch time talk at school on Monday amongst our friends.

He popped in the tape and the VHS clicked on. I couldn't help but glance behind me, checking the dark corners of the room even before the film got on its way. Goosebumps went up and down my spine as the movie progressed; there would not be any sleep for me tonight. Each and every sequence of the movie made me a little more nervous that some two foot tall creepy pale girl would emerge from the shadows. As I sat there checking corners of the room constantly, I began to feel my hands start to sweat. I wanted to close my eyes so bad, but somehow the film was too captivating, it would not allow me to do so. As the movie came to an end Charlie and I looked at each other. “On three we run upstairs,” he whispered.

Even once we got upstairs, I could still hear all the creaks. The sounds that built suspense kept playing through my ears as I closed my eyes. I could hear the sounds of creaking floor boards, sometimes leading to horror and other times building up to nothing as the directors messed with our minds. The disgusting image of the young girl vomiting profusely, like some sort of broken faucet releasing the grimiest substances you would expect to find deep in a landfill of rotting waste kept replaying in my mind.

The hairs on my arms stood on end, we had gotten upstairs but Charlie wanted nothing more then to go back down. We loaded up two Nerf guns and made our decent into his basement. It seemed like there were people watching from every shadow, mocking us. Charlie decided it would be best to build a tent in the middle of the room with the blanket on the coach and hold fort. I agreed but at the same time could feel my eyes watering; I glanced behind me and nearly scream as one of his cats walked down the stairs casually.

As the night progressed, my eyes didn't even get tired - they just constantly darted from one corner of the room to the next searching. I looked over to see Charlie wide awake just looking forward intently focused with his Nerf gun still in his hands, as if the Nerf gun could protect him from supernatural forces. I wiped my sweaty hands on my pants and looked out the basement exit. It was starting to get light out, another hour or two and everything would be okay. Somehow the light meant everything was okay, that nothing could touch us.

As the sun came up we both lay down to go to sleep. There was a new connection between us though, an understanding of that we could out do fear together. Charlie and I are still good friends today, eight years after we watched the movie and the connections we made during event such as watching the exorcist are really what build our friendship. And even though we did end up talking about our adventure in school Monday it was more of a victory story.