Mock Trial Update 3

So.... been a while since I posted one of these. Needless to say, alot has happened since then. We're all getting ready for dress rehearsals and then scrimmages will start. More importantly, the bar foundation made one of the most wild and insane clarifications ever.

The bar foundations announced a couple weeks ago that the witness KC Perry is being replaced with Mikey Skogan! KC was the wife of Loren, who is the defendent. KC's testimony was practically useless, especially because she suffered from a rare brain tumor that prevented her from remembering any relevant information. Additionally, her testimony doesn't make sense at all because her very being contradicts the facts of the case. According to doctor's life expectancy projections, her brain tumor was supposed to kill KC at least a year and a half ago from the time of the trials.

The bar foundation obviously made a mistake by making KC a witness in the case, but replacing her with a whole nother witness is even worse. Mikey Skogan is a total jerk college student. His main point in the case is to counter Peyton's testimony. Apart from that and the fact that he found Bailey in the hotel room, he is no more useful than KC was as a witness. After some controversy as to whether to keep the students playing each witness the same, Mrs. Worgess decided to have the roles stay the same, which means Kelsey and Amy, who were playing KC, are now playing Mikey. Talk about fustrating... What's worse is that this was clarified the week before the KCs were supposed to finish memorizing the second longest witness statement in the case... ...and now they have a whole new one to memorize from scratch.


Anyway... It is quarter to 7 and I'm only up this early because I'm leaving for Fall State at quarter after, so this is obviously where I end. Until the next update...

Review of Switchfoot's new album Hello Hurricane pending. I've got a precis and a debate case to write though. Hopefully I'll get around to it before Fall State next weekend.

Reflection Essay

So I've been going crazy over school, and I haven't had the time to blog at all. Since I've been really occupied with school, I figured I'd post an essay I wrote. This is a Reflection Essay on Mere Christianity and it's from my Inklings Class.

Mere Christianity

Reflect on what Dualism is and why C. S. Lewis believes it is an inferior point of view to Christianity.

According to Lewis, Dualism and Christianity are the only two religions that “face all the facts” (42). When Lewis refers to the facts that Dualism and Christianity face, he is referring to the traits of reality. Lewis states that reality is never simple, but it is in fact complicated and odd and that all other religions besides Dualism and Christianity fail to meet these criteria (40-42). He goes on to describes the Christian viewpoint by stating “that this is a good world that has gone wrong, but [the Christian view] still retains the memory of what it [the world] ought to have been”, and defines Dualism as “the belief that there are two equal and independent powers at the back of everything, one of them good and the other bad” (42). The topic posed has two parts to it. What is Dualism? And why does Lewis believe it is an inferior belief when compared to Christianity?
In Mere Christianity Lewis only defines Dualism as a belief in which there are equal and opposite good and bad powers, but he does not explain why Dualism is not a simple religion, and why it “faces all the facts” (42-43). Lewis does go on to describe the two powers by saying that the opposing powers are independent, that one did not create the other, that nothing created them, and that each of them thinks it is good and the other is bad (42). By Lewis’ definition, Dualism seems like a simple religion, as does Christianity for that matter, yet, with closer and deeper consideration of the particular doctrines of both religions, they become complicated and odd. Complication and peculiarity are both defined by Lewis as traits of reality (41). If these two ideologies face all the facts and comply with reality’s standard of complication, which one is correct?
This question ties in with the second portion of the topic, why does Lewis believe that Dualism is inferior compared to Christianity? The fallacy in Dualism begins with the simple act of calling one of these two powers good, and the other bad. Lewis says, “the moment you say that [that one force is good and the other bad], you are putting into the universe a third thing in addition to the two Powers: some law or standard or rule of good by which one of the powers conforms to and the other fails to conform to” (43). Because the two powers are judged by this standard, it suddenly makes this law or the Someone who made the law higher up than these two original powers; and then you come to the conclusion that this Someone is a God, and before you know it, the very basis for Dualism crumbles (43). This then begs the question: does Christianity cope with this standard of behavior and the Someone behind it that Dualism cannot explain? The answer is, of course, yes. This Someone behind the law is the very basis for the Christian faith.

Top 25 Guitarists of All Time

So... I was pretty horrified with RS's list of top 100 guitarist of all time, so I thought I'd make my own little list, except minimize it to 25. So here goes...


1. Jimi Hendrix

2. BB King

3. Eric Clapton

4. Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones

5. Jimmy Paige of Led Zepplin

6. Kirk Hammett of Metallica

7. Duane Allman of the Allman Brothers Band

8. Chuck Berry

9. Stevie Ray Vaughn

10. Steve Vai

11. Yngwie Malmsteen

12. Herman Li of Dragonforce

13. Eddie Van Halen of Van Halen

14. Kurt Cobain of Nirvana

15. John Frusciante of The Red Hot Chili Peppers

16. Tom Morrello of Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave

17. George Harrison of The Beatles

18. Les Paul

19. Brian May of Queen

20. Joe Perry of Aerosmith

21. Pete Townshend of The Who

22. Jonathan Cain of Journey

23. Angus Young of AC/DC

24. David Gilmore of Pink Floyd

25. Orianthi - This one is a surprise, but amazing guitarists are not limited to guys


So there you have it. I probably missed a couple, or mixed them up, but I've gone over it a couple times, so if I have missed someone plz lemme know.

Mock Trial Update 2

Another update on Mock Trial. These probably won't be so close together, but since it's the beginning of the year, there's alot happening. Namely, the witness roles got auditioned for and decided on this past meeting. Here's the roster:

Prosecution
Ryan Reynolds: Josh Pomerantz and me
Devin Walsh (expert): Joe Barakat and Hazel Peralta
Peyton Bralow: Elliot Taylor and Julie Dinkler

Defense a.k.a. guilty ppl
Loren Perry: Mark Barakat and Daniel Margulis
Jordan Nathanson(sp?) (expert): Aaron Pomerantz and Cassie Dinkler
KC Perry: Amy Hulehan and Kelsey Worgess

That's all for now. Now I gotta do a ton of math and go finish a precis, which is all due by tomorrow morning/afternoon respectively.

Duty calls...

Skillet Awake Review

Man oh man, Skillet has come a long way, or should I say gone. Unfortunately, I can’t truthfully say that I think the old Skillet was, or the new Skillet is, a good group. Both musical styles have something good in them, but lack something essential to make it “good music.” The two main things I find totally different in the old and new group are the lyrical content and the musical style. To explore these in depth, let’s compare the “old Skillet” to Skillet’s newly released album, Awake.

Awake was greatly anticipated by fans, due to Skillet’s previously released Grammy-nominated album Comatose. This brings me to my first point, the lyrical content of Skillet’s Awake compared to the “older” Skillet. To be honest, I was surprised after hearing one of the most popular songs off the album, Monster. I wasn’t surprised at any appallingly bad written lyrics, but rather how dark and similar the lyrics and music sounded to Three Days Grace’s song, Animal I have Become. Don’t get me wrong, I am in no way defending Three Days Grace’s song any more than Skillet’s, but after hearing the rest of the album, I was very surprised about how similar the ideas in many songs off Awake were so… well…dark and emo, a quality that at least I think definitely reflects 3DG’s style and lyrics. The songs that blatantly follow this lyrical pattern are Sometimes, Monster, Should’ve when you could’ve, and It’s not me It’s you.

How do these song lyrics differ from their previous style? Skillet has deviated from Christian themes more and more with each album for popularity purposes, but even Awake is a huge jump from the lyrics of Comatose. This is surprising, because when I refer to the “new Skillet” I refer to Comatose and Awake, yet the lyrics from Awake were surprisingly dark compared to Comatose. There is not one specific reference to God in the new album, and there’s only one song with a possible reference to God. Of course it’s only in the form or a “hero who saves people just in time” that they go about doing this. No reference to God, and probably none intended, just a vague description of someone, a "hero" who saves people just like God. It's not the lack of reference to God that bothers me, it's the fact that if you didn’t know they were a Christian band before listening to Awake, you wouldn't think they were anything close to a Christian band, and maybe even something opposite.

This brings me to my second point, the musical style of Awake. Despite my derogatory comments about their lyrics, I was actually quite entertained by Skillet’s new instrumental approach to their music. This style wasn’t developed in Awake however, it started in Comatose, and was probably the main reason it received its Grammy Nomination. Skillet does however deviate slightly from that style in a few songs, diverting to a more metal/hard rock tone which I personally find incredibly ugly and hard to listen to with John Cooper’s voice singing.

In terms of musical appreciation, John’s voice was the only big problem I had with Awake's musical qualities. I'm not saying the rest of the music was anything spectacular- it wasn't, But it wasn't bad either. John's voice went so well with Skillet's old style of music, and, although it wasn’t as good as the older style, it still went pretty well with the instrumental approach of Comatose. But now that Skillet has introduced this harder, more metalish tone, it doesn’t mix AT ALL. Its like... trying to eat something tough like steak, with something much more mellow (not saying his voice is mellow, just saying it’s more mellow than a real metal singer’s), like... milk. Try eating steak, dipped in milk. Yeah, it doesn’t work. Sorry for the stupid analogy, but you get the point. If you don’t, just listen to Sometimes from Awake, and you should know what I’m talking about.

In conclusion, I personally, was surprised at Skillet’s new album. I anticipated something almost identical to Comatose musically, and, I didn’t really expect anything different lyrically. When you got a good thing going, you don't wanna blow it huh? I believe the purpose of Awake was to produce an album with some remeniscence of Comatoses' instrumental fame, while at the same time tweaking it and adding some darker and more emo themes, for popularity purpose of course. They got carried away with the popularity issue, and would’ve gotten better results if they stuck with the style that made Comatose so popular. Instead of tweaking that instrumental acompaniment into a harder style, Skillet would've gotten better results with a softer approach, or at the most something just a little harder than Comatose.


**Out of *****

Music News

I found this bit on ultimate guitar's homepage, gotta love their music news updates. Anyway, Smashing Pumpkins is giving away their entire new record, Teargarden By Kaleidyscope, for free. According to the update given on their website by Billy, they will release each song individually for free, starting around Halloween until they've released all 44. Here's the two links.

http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/upcoming_releases/smashing_pumpkins_to_release_44-track_album_digitally.html

and

http://www.smashingpumpkins.com/pages/news/announcement-from-billy-corgan-about-new-smashing-pumpkins-album