Chesska55's Blog

Actress Meredith Baxter who played Michael J. Fox’s Mom on the well known “Family Ties” tv show, confirmed in a very brave way that she was a lesbian. The National Enquirer recently ran a story about Baxter being spotted on a lesbian cruise through the Caribbean with a “female friend,” which was then picked up by celebrity blog. As a result, she decided tell her fans herself. “I didn’t want some tabloid to take the story and make it up,” Baxter said in the interview. “I wanted it to be in my own words”

This has cause a lot of controversy among conservatives. A lot are coming out saying awful things about Meredith, but coming out of the closet is truly an act of courage and I think they are ignorant. Although Meredith is only now publicly acknowledging her sexual orientation, she opened up to her five children soon after coming to terms with it herself. All of her kids were nothing but supportive and that is wonderful. This only proves how strong women are. She went through a lot of suffering accepting who she was and trying to get people to accept her now as her true self. Straight or gay she still managed to be a mother and that’s something to look up to.

I come from a tropical country and I find very interesting that when it rains in LA everyone seems to freak out. The world news has stop because the newscasters are only talking about the weather, and when will the rain finally stop. Traffic has been a nightmare and not even mention all the accidents. For this reasons, I just came to the conclusion that people in LA don’t know how to drive in rain.

The reason I think that is because here in LA it doesn’t rain very often. But when it pours, I’d always see cars in the ditch near the freeway onramp. The CHP will be on the News urging people to drive slowly and safely, and comment about how accident rates shoot up when it rains. Also, a lot of people don’t seem to drive any slower when it’s raining.

Now my question is, if it snowed in Los Angeles would we have to declare the county a natural disaster area?

We have all witness how Tiger Woods has become the number one story in America. It has been two weeks since the “car crash” and the the media doesn’t just cover the news but attempts to drive it. It’s pathetic the way they have been trying to stretch out this story, interviewing the other women’s ex fiances etc. and trying to exploit every conceivable angle.

I hear people saying that he has the right to mantain his “privacy”, but Mr. Woods gave up his privacy the same day he took money to endorse products. That may sound simple minded but it needs to be said that if you want to sell “me” a product, you must represent a person I respect. I’m so tired of people showing sympathy for Tiger. I’ve heard so many times over the last few days the argument “he’s only human, leave him alone”. Well, you know what, my neighbor’s human, my friends are human, my employess are human, but good luck if you think any one of them will affect my purchasing decisions.

NEW MOON IS OUT!

I went to the New Moon premiere last night for the midnight screenings and I have to say I’ve never seen anything like it before. Girls and boys from ALL ages were there waiting impatiently. I got there 2 hours before and the line was unimaginably long. People were in line since 6 p.m. I was shocked. I’ve been a big fan of the book series since 06, and at the time I never imagined it will get this big.

For what I’ve read. Midnights shows made 26 million last night, which is more than Twilight did last year on the same midnight shows. That would beat the previous midnight record, held by “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” It earned $22.2 million this year.”The Dark Knight” from 2008 is third with $18.5 million. I feel that The Twilight Saga has grown bigger since last year, and I find amazing how can one movie unite the world together. I have to say that I wish we could unite for other more important issues than a movie though.

On Tuesday like every morning I turned on my TV to see the Today Show. It catch my attention when they said that Carrie Prejean will be on the show promoting her new book. I kept watching until they started to interview her. At first, I wanted to give her a chance and hear what she had to say, hoping that she will defend herself in a mature way about all the allegations made about her a couple of months ago.Everyone deserves a second chance right? Instead, I found myself in shock seeing how rude and defensive she was.

Two days after, I found all over the news the controversy about her appearance on Larry King’s show. TMZ.com rightly described as a “most awesomely awkward” moment on Larry King Live. After reading all this I went on youtube to watch what was all fuss about. I couldn’t believe how disrespectful she was towards Larry King. He was not being “Innapropiate” as she claimed repeatedly. He was just interviewing her, its his job. First, she doesn’t know how to handle herself and I think that if she knew that all this questions about her sex tape were going to be ask, she should have prepared herself for them. And not act like a child every time that its brought up on an interview.

I somehow get the idea that because no one has been talking about her for a while she just wants media attention. I personally, would not buy her book. I don’t think she’s promoting her book at all. She’s promoting herself as more than anything. She doesn’t care about other young ladies as she says. I think she is selfish and a big joke.

Agree?

Shock advertising or Shockvertising is a type of advertising defined as “deliberately, rather than inadvertently, startles and offends its audience by violating norms for social values and personal ideals.” Shock advertising captures attention, and also attracts an audience to a certain brand or bring awareness to a certain public service issue, health issue, or cause for example: STD prevention, bringing awareness of racism and other injustices, or discouraging smoking among teens.

This form of advertising is often controversial, disturbing, explicit and may bring out provocative political message. his form of advertising may not only offend but can also frighten as well, using scare tactics and elements of fear to sell a product or deliver a public service message, making a “high impact.” In the advertising business, this combination of frightening and offensive advertisingis known as “shockvertising” and is often considered to have been pioneered by Benetton, the Italian clothing retailers which created the line United Colors of Benetton, and its advertisements in the late 1980s.

There are many shockvertisings now days. I studied Advertising for a year in Venezuela and this type of ads really interested me for their controversial material.

Here are some examples:

UNITED COLORS BENETTON

BRAZIL Pedestrians crossing streets

Freedom for Animals

Whale atrocities

Contents:

Southwest kicks Mom

Southwest Arline’s escorted off a plane a Mom and his kid for screaming and crying too loudly. I’m sure we have all experienced this situation. I know kids can scream and annoy us, but is it right to kick them out? Kids are always going to be kids and sometimes we can’t control them. This act from the crew of Southwest Airlines its just unbelievable. In my opinion, they handled the situation badly and I don’t think that its a crime for a child to cry.

This situation will put in jeopardy the good reputation that this airline has. They took away that child’s and his mother rights of traveling. Flight attendants should now how to handle this kind of situations better and not just get the easy way out. That mom and her son had the right to stay on that plane because they paid for their tickets. This for me is another example of how human rights are being ignored every day, and the worst part of it is that we let this happen.

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS!

Obama to lift U.S. entry ban for those with HIV

This week President Obama announced that he will abolish travel ban against people infected with the HIV virus in the U.S. The law has effectively kept out thousands of students, tourists and refugees and has complicated the adoption of children with HIV. This law has been going on for 22 years and I couldn’t be happier that its finally over. I read comments of people with HIV expressing how grateful and happy they were and that finally they could be able to come to Disneyland and visit family members here in the U.S. If we want our country to be one of the leaders in dealing against HIV we are taking a right step towards it.

On the other hand, other 11 countries still have this law, which in my opinion is pure discrimination. The fact that someone is ill doesn’t make them less human. By taking away their rights to go on a plane and visit another country is just wrong. Taking away their rights as human beings is not the way to combat this disease. On the contrary by letting them see that they are not less than anyone else it will probably encourage more people with HIV to get treatment and get tested.

I found this article shocking. One of the hottest topics right now since President Obama was elective almost a year ago is the War in Afghanistan. President Obama is debating on sending more troops to war. I personally think he shouldn’t. First of all because this will put in risk more lives of young mans and second because of the cost of this non sense war. We been on an economic crisis and there is no way we should be spending more money than we’ve already have on this war. Eight years have gone by.Is the Government pretending to invest other eight years?

One of the things that mostly catch my attention about this article was that Michael O’Hanlon, a defense analyst at the Brookings Institution, says one useful way to break down these huge numbers is to look at how much it costs to send just one soldier to war. And that cost is ONE MILLION DOLLARS. If we send 40,000 more troops that will be 40 million dollars wasted on guns and lives. We are basically paying to kill human beings. I say, that instead of using that money to send more troops we should invest that money in schools, hospitals, houses and food for the people in Afghanistan. WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER. For the crime of one person should they all suffer for years? Should kids die over this? Is it really worth it? I don’t think so. It’s time to get this war over with it. This was has cost us more than money, it has cost us pain and deaths.
If President Obama decides to send more troops a lot of people will feel deception.

Calculating the Cost of The War

I lived in Caracas, Venezuela for 10 years, so I was basically raised there. During 2006 and 2007, I formed part of a student movement against the Venezuelan Government. We would leave are books behind and instead of attending school in an institution we attended school in the streets. We were thought about life, freedom of speech, human rights and most important of all how to stand up for your beliefs. The reason I moved to LA was because my family started getting extremely worried about my safety. Therefore, I put mine and my families safety first.

A lot of students are getting killed and locked up in prison for defending their rights. Even though it was really tough for me to leave behind this wonderful experience I still support them with all my heart and soul. These young people are the bravest persons I have ever met. The union and support that we have for one another is unconditional. After almost 3 years these students are not even thinking about giving up, they will fight as long as they can.

In Venezuela, we see so much violence. And we have seen so much injustice under Chavez. That we have a feeling there is nothing left to lose. Young people are the future and hope of Venezuela. Hope is all we have left.