Romina’s Blog

There is something that has been bothering me, which I think that I should share with you all.

Recently I have been hearing phrases such us: “I want to be a part of history” or “We want to make history!” or “This is a chance to be a part of history!”

Most of these statements have been made in reference of voting for Barack Obama. Therein lies my problem. I keep hearing everybody say that they want to vote for Obama because they want to influence history. They want to be able to say that they voted for the first Black President (African American to be politically correct). Now, I ask myself wouldn’t voting for Hillary Clinton have the same effect? Wouldn’t voting for a WOMAN to be in the White House be making history just as much as voting for a black man?

Now, I have also met a select group of women that are upset with Oprah for supporting Obama. That this was her chance to represent herself and support a strong woman in excelling in a “man’s world.” Although I am a supporter of Clinton, I find this statement to be ignorant.

Which brings me to the real problem that scares me the most. If people are just voting for Obama only to make history, or people are doing the same for Clinton… then I think that we are very wrong in the way that we select the leader of our country. We should not be voting for someone just because they are black or just because they are female or Chinese or maybe just because he/she is blonde. We should be selecting our next president based on their experience and the issues that they support or have plans for. I would not support a woman just because I too am a woman. I will support her if I think that she is strong and if I think that she is capable of doing what she claims she can do.

Making history is important, but it should not be based on the colour of a person’s skin or their ethnicity. If you want to make history, you need to scrutinize the candidates and choose someone that can really influence history by making changes or improving things for the better.

I have not heard anybody talking about this issue and I would love to know other people’s opinions on this, so drop a comment.

I’m a little bit late with this, but hey what can I say… I’ve been busy!

Last week I saw Charlie Bartlett directed by Jon Poll and written by Gustin nash. Here is a synopsis from IMDb.com if you have no idea what movie I am talking about: “A rich kid (Yelchin) becomes the self-appointed psychiatrist to the student body of his new high school.” Check out the trailer: Here.

If you have already read other reviews about this, I am sure that you have heard the comparisons made with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or that it is a “rip-off” of said movie. Whatever you may have read along those lines… forget it!

Charlie Bartlett is a high school comedy that subtly breaks a few boundaries in said genre. The film focuses on the teen angst theme, embodying the ever popular “parents just don’t understand” phrase. We follow on a journey that Charlie goes on trying to get others to accept him, while facing the difficulties of accepting himself.

The best part about this film is that they made the bold move of using young actors that do not have familiar faces (ie: Lindsay Lohan). Anton Yelchin did a fantastic job as the complex and quirky character Charlie Bartlett. Kat Dennings took a role that could have very easily been a burned out character and managed to make her into a unique and very memorable person.

Although this film is not filled with knee-slapping moments such as Superbad, Charlie Bartlett was able to capture high school moments that actually happen and make them laughable (as they so quite often are in reality). The film makes it easy to relate to with these awkward instances, whether you went to a high school like the one portrayed in the film or you didn’t. It focused so much on each student as individuals as opposed to grouping them into cliques as in Mean Girls.

During the Q & A with Gustin Nash, in response to the question of whether the film had some autobiographical events in it, he said that all of his projects had a touch of his life in them. It is quite clear that there was a little bit of Charlie Bartlett in all of us, especially as we were growing up in high school. Charlie Bartlett is insecure, he’s confident, always seeking approval, yet doing things his own way. Sounds like a teenager, doesn’t it?

If you enjoyed movies like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or The Breakfast Club, then you will enjoy Charlie Bartlett and every nostalgic bit of it.

A message that will hopefully reach Time Warner Cable in time.

My morning routine:

I open my eyes and look around, deciding if there’s a enough light yet to fully wake me up. I lay in bed for about an hour thinking about my to-do list and sometimes pondering on the many perplexities of the mysterious universe that surrounds me. I stretch in bed and realize how it’s just too cold to get out from under the covers. I turn on the television to watch my daily dosage of a Windows error dialog box in the center of my screen.

Wait. WHAT?!?

It’s all true; I would not lie about such a serious matter. WSI (Weather Services International) created a service that features “a number of technological advances” that bring local weather to your television in a fast and reliable way. That really is innovative and I appreciate their efforts because I like knowing what the state of the weather is at all hours of the day. I don’t know how anybody managed to stay alive before (in the time when we had to figure out if it was raining for ourselves).

For those of you who have Time Warner Cable and live in South California, I am sure that you understand just how I felt when I turned on the TV to Channel 97 to find out just what was going on outside.

“scan32 has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience.”

That doesn’t look like a forecast to me!!! What’s going on?!?! I can’t see the temperature!!! I CAN’T LEAVE MY HOUSE WITHOUT KNOWING!!! This is a huge inconvenience.

Time Warner Cable, if you are out there and reading this:
I need you to fix the problem. It has been more than a few days now and as I said before I cannot leave my house. This is not only crucial for my health, but it is a factor that affects thousands of people that want to know what their local weather is.

“If you were in the middle of something, the information you were working on might be lost.

Please tell Microsoft about this problem.
We have created an error report that you can send to us. We will treat this report as confidential and anonymous.”

Time Warner Cable, I beg of you… for the sake of humanity… do NOT send an error report. Do NOT tell Microsoft about this problem. Think about it, it’s their fault there is a dialog box on hundreds of TV sets. The ratings for this channel have gone down immensely since this occurred. I urge you to press “Don’t Send” and let us continue enjoying the weather forecast that you so faithfully supply to us hourly.

Sincerely,
Romina Espinosa
A Concerned Citizen