YOUTH: THE MEDIA NEEDS YOU!
How far are you willing to go?
MIKE VASILIOU
The media wants you! Here is your big shot at becoming a celebrity! First you’ve got to get rid of anything and everything you know, that means all of that science junk and useless math you’ve been keeping in your head for university. Secondly, you need to act dumb, flirty and sexy. Focus on weighing less than 100 lbs, and only drink water. Can you do that? Just look up to Hilary Duff and Tom Cruise, and your set! But first, how far are you willing to go?
Media-constantly repeated- is all around us; the radio, television and internet, at a general point. We see and hear it, possibly think it, as if breathing air. Constantly sucked in by the numeral amount of gossip surrounding celebrities- none of us know by the way- and looking up to a sexy body image is in no means a proper way to live a healthy teenage life.
You might argue, but it’s true. Our lives become so focused on television and the internet that we develop horrible study habits, bad attention spans and become monotonous creatures-all this happening at a crucial adolescent time. We think not for ourselves but for everyone else and what they want us to think. Subconsciously we do not know how it affects us, but in time it eventually shows.
Being able to identify the high-quality and informative from the cheap and cloning is something we do however learn as we develop into adults. With that in mind, I am not saying that the media doesn’t give us an advantage to our past, because it certainly does. We have better research tools, the world comes together much faster and so much can be granted to us through it. It has been a way to communicate positive moral messages-though the negative ones are more obvious-and develop a solid technique for creative inspiration.
Media recently though, at least in the past few years, has become alarmingly ‘fake’. The six o’ clock news has more information on Paris Hilton than last night’s political campaign. But even that, especially in the U.S., has been a popularity contest too. And you can’t even turn on the radio without hearing that another singer is becoming an actress. An actress who, now, can record her untalented vocal voice into a machine, where it ultimately spits out a number one hit on the charts. Artist such as Cole Potter or Lauryn Hill are the real musicians, they have talent, but are always being overshadowed by a marketed-based music industry.
Sure its good entertainment and keeps us distracted for a while from our own problems but when and where do we draw the line? There is life beyond the media and being able to choose, as a personal choice, between what one feels is the right thing compared to the bad is something we all must do. Identifying within the media, too, the positive benefits and encouraging entertainment is very important. It is your choice after all; I just hope you won’t go too far.
Who is the greatest?
Mike A. Vasiliou
Second my first and top your best
What it comes down to is,
Who will win this test?
Is it you, or I, to win
I feel it deep within my skin
Each move you make,
It is challenge we both take.
We are staring eye to eye,
No glances, no looking by,
Cause we aren’t playing a game
We are creating a flame.
Connection in battle, sparks they are soaring
One on one, going to work hard,
To get the goal, we cannot let down our guard.
Opponent an obstacle, a teammate has strength,
Our positions, we’ve titled to run the desired length.
Don’t look down; it’s you and me to race
Swim a lap, run a mile, burn rubber,
Take it with pace,
Cause the end is near, and I am going to win
My heart is set, held high, my chin.
The last man standing is said to be the greatest
It’s not the guy knocked down or whoever is the latest.
The finish line, it calls, champions of courage and heart,
To rise to the challenge, the gun at the start.
Children: They Need to Get Active!
In a problem to overweight children breeds a solution to bad habits: going outside!
MIKE VASILIOU
SPECIAL TO THE PAPER
What is it going to take our society to see the effects of lack of activity on children? Children, at least those of twenty years ago, lived off two things: food and activity. From dawn to dusk, breakfast to dinner, children were outside, active and alive. Look around in our time and see how children live, now; at home, in front of a TV and lazy.
With an alarming rise in children who are obese, ADD-affected, and slothful, we can safely agree that it’s due to the lack of activity. Obesity was hardly an issue back in the late 70’s because children were full of life. They were not ‘glued’ to a 52’ television watching Survivor, the ever popular reality show, they were being survivors. Children, now with an impenetrable watch on them from parents, 24/7, cannot even leave their suburban street and visit the closest park- unless of course it is behind the house where parents can watch them like hawks. Then the slightest accident-whether it be falling off a swing or jumping from the monkey bars-parents are there to rescue them with a 2-tonne emergency kit.
Not saying that we have not come far in terms of safety regulations, from the numeral amounts of child abductions, dog bites and increased car accidents among children, because we have and it is no wonder parents fear for their child’s life. However I am preaching-as awful as it sounds- children are becoming mindless beings. They aren’t experiencing dangers faced by them to learn right from wrong. For instance if they run into rocks near a creek and lose a shoe in them, I sure hope they do not try it again. But because they do not experience those dangers on a regular basis-and as horrible as it may sound- when they actually go near water they lose all common sense and try something even more dangerous.
Being inside all day, on a sunny Saturday afternoon, all the food they want to eat and all the video games they want, isn’t a real idea of activity. Sure they have enforced more physical education in schools and banned junk food from cafeterias but they are lacking that essential sense of adventure, to explore the unknown outside their home, their small street and that park in the school playground. At age seven, a child going on a diet doesn’t sound appropriate, it sounds ridiculous. Parents should not be limiting their food supply because their lack of activities does not balance food intact. It should be the other way around. It just seems so inhumane.
I cannot give advice on how to increase safe, bubble-wrapped fun, but I can say that not giving your child the chance to experience exercise beyond the gymnasium, clear of the possible thirty-minute workout video with mom, extending past the occasional walk after dinner, is in no way an approach to give your child a healthy advantage in a society, now governed on weight-loss.
Do we really want our children to be products of a future economy based solely on indoor fun? Because even though they risk UV rays, asthma from smog etc, they do come from a natural, instinctive background. I’ll leave this for you; you are the judge.
This is it!
Mike A. Vasiliou
Distance instance my chance,
To shine with, my thoughts inside,
Minds eye, together unwind,
The tangled string, my thoughts
We sing, a choir of angels, the thread
We call life, it dangles, we fight, to hang on,
The rope we handle.
Limbo our lives, straddle our pride swallow hard our homes remember.
Silver medals pure white gold and ember.
Makes it the greatest time unfold forever.
Wishful in dance and listed romance
The song she sings with mighty glory
Make it her dream, vision
Unseen, it’s our future-selves to deem.
City lights and suburban heights
Conversation she sells to me
Join hands in church, a lovely choir
The bells they chime,
Doves from heaven come to make it rhyme.
Collaborate and celebrate
This year is soon over
Through masks, remembrance
December and clover, we surrender,
Our time we spend to last a lifetime.
Surround the air with familiar voices as we wonder about our choices.
She doesn’t exist.
Mike A. Vasiliou
Does she hear me?
My cries for help,
Am I plagiarizing?
Am I procrastinating?
It took so long to see it
And its not even there
How can I do it?
This really doesn’t seem fair.
If I strayed from my path,
“The path to be”
How do I get back?
And do I do it for me?
This temptation is never-ending
It doesn’t want to stop
I feel so numb and it’s overextending
Like a big fat flop.
You act in the vein, I am invisible,
Like I don’t have a heart
My soul, to you seems divisible,
You ripped me apart.
Cried rivers its ‘I’, who
‘I’, is she, that appears like nothing
A ghost screaming ‘boo’ in green goo
Her tears, she turns it into something new.
Now she’s looking in the mirror
She sees a reflection, transparent complexion,
Faded, it isn’t getting clearer,
She doesn’t exist, facing ultimate rejection.
Screwed!
By: Mike A. Vasiliou
It’s crunch time
I’m struggl’in
Try’in, fight’in, my eyes keep shut’in
Good, bad, mediocre?
It’s unlike ne game of poker.
The cards aren’t real,
It is these words I deal
The chips are piled
The sweat, 52, each one wyld.
The words, type, insane, I hype,
To find the balance on the lengthy gripe.
Tests are battles, assignments a fight
The sword my fingers, the shield against da light
To rid me of the pain I gotta get an eighty
Can’t waste ne more time, or it could get weighty.
The war, I’m messed, three a.m.
I’m done, can’t make it to class on two hours, damn
Spell’in “mistakes”, with no ‘a’’s
The words of the week without ne ‘days’
There ain’t no way I’m gonna make it happen
My fingers anticipate my desk, deh keep tappin
To find da right werd,
To fit the right sentence,
Present past or future tense.
Shoulders are clapping,
They see me scrapping
I seriously need a lil napping.
Sit still, or restless,
Not sure of the motive
My eyes keep tripp’in
There’s something mov’in in the distance.
4 am, now I’m awake, if the weekend were here
I wouldn’t be tired and wouldn’t have ne fear,
But I’m hop’in, search’in the ground I’m cop’in
And understand to conclude,
That seriously,
I’M SCREWED!
PROLOGUE
It had always been something he feared within the room; the way he felt when he couldn’t see anything around him, expect for the endless dark before him. It was as though something could see him and he couldn’t look back. It made him vulnerable to the dark world in front of him and he didn’t like that feeling. Passing into one dream and then another as the night went by was something he never and could ever do with ease. Little did he know that this feeling would prove useful on a night when evil took over the world?
He had always been told that mysterious secrets lay deep within the dark of the night, past the enchanted dreams, the scrolling moon across the horizon and especially beyond the fears which, in human nature, has proven to be a vulnerable weapon. However it was not until the night when the lives of him and many others were at risk. Whether they knew it or not, the events leading up to the tragic events would not compare to the torture and merciless pain inflicted on each of them, as they innocently encountered evil. Readers beware; this isn’t your typical horror story. The following is a story unsuitable for a younger viewer. Its deeply descriptive and graphic content, at times, can be overwhelming. The story is read in third person, and some of the characters do not have physical description. Leave it to your imagination.
19 Ways To Maintain A Healthy Level Of Insanity
19 Ways To Maintain A Healthy Level Of Insanity
1. At Lunch Time, Sit In Your Parked Car With Sunglasses on and point a Hair Dryer At Passing Cars. See If They Slow Down.
2. Page Yourself Over The Intercom. Don't Disguise Your Voice.
3. Every Time Someone Asks You To Do Something, ask If They Want Fries with that.
4. Put Your Garbage Can On Your Desk And Label it "In".
5. Put Decaf In The Coffee Maker For 3 Weeks. Once Everyone has Gotten Over Their Caffeine Addictions, Switch to Espresso.
6. In The Memo Field Of All Your Checks, Write "For Smuggling Diamonds".
7. Finish All Your sentences with "In Accordance With The Prophecy".
8. Don't use any punctuation.
9. As Often As Possible, Skip Rather Than Walk.
10. Order a Diet Water whenever you go out to eat, with a serious face.
11. Specify That Your Drive-through Order Is "To Go".
12. Sing Along At The Opera.
13. Go To A Poetry Recital. And Ask Why The Poems Don't Rhyme?
14. Put Mosquito Netting Around Your Work Area And Play tropical Sounds All Day.
15. Five Days In Advance, Tell Your Friends You Can't Attend Their Party Because You're Not In The Mood.
16. Have Your Co-workers Address You By Your Wrestling Name, Rock Bottom.
17. When The Money Comes Out The ATM, Scream "I Won! I Won!"
18. When Leaving The Zoo, Start Running Towards The Parking lot, Yelling "Run For Your Lives! They're Loose!"
19. Tell Your Children Over Dinner, "Due To The Economy, We Are Going To Have To Let One Of You Go."