18 Years Old and the Mayor

When you first meet Kyle Corbin you see him as a regular kind of guy who was raised from the time he was born in the town of Union Oregon. He attended elementary, middle and high school in Union and graduated from Union High. He has always lived in this town where everyone knows everyone and have taken care of each other throughout they're lives.
Yes, when you first meet Kyle Corbin he seems like just another small town kid. What you dont' see is that at the age of 18 he ran for mayor of his
hometown and won against two other runners
Image courtesy of the Oregon State Library.
who surpassed him in age and experience. His campaign was a simple door-to-door strategy that proved to be affective making him one of the youngest elected mayor in the United States.
Corbin ran for a two-year term where he came across many different issues from raising taxes for a cleaner, more productive water system to the amount of weeds that were in the yards of the citizens.
Kyle's term has ended and he admits that he's relieved that it's over but feels that it was a very valuble step in his life and that it will help him pursue his dream of working in politics but, right now he is happy that he has the time to attend college and work on a major in music.

Our Social Networking World

With all the different social networking sites in the world wide web these days, such as Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, Fubar, and many more, it raises the question of "Who really cares what your doing 24/7?!" Not only can individuals update they're status online but, they can also update they're status from they're cell phones....and they do.
Shela Johnson is 17 years old and says that she does status updates almost every hour and likes the fact that she can let people know what she's thinking, saying and doing but her brother Chris, who is in his twenties, says that he only updates when something amazing happens in his life. He also believes that girls are just more open about everything than guys are and want everyone to know everything about they're lives. "To be honest, it's actually kinda annoying that girls update all the time because it shows that they just want someone to pay attention to them," says Chris.
It raises the question about genders and social networking. Girls seem to display if they're upset or happy about relationships, school and friends and guys seem to keep everything really reserved and private unless it's to they're closest friends in personal messages and not comments for the whole world to see.
Should we be more discreet with our updates? Is Tweeting that you just put mustard on your corn dog or that you just went to the bathroom really necessary? Has social networking status' ruined our ability to socialize with other people?

picture courtesy of Joits

Man, I Love College!

In the song by Asher Roth, "I Love College," He sings about the life of the typical college student. The typical college student is painted as the one who graduated high school and moved on to better things such as studying late nights and getting a degree in a respected feild, graduating and going on to work in the said feild.

As most of the parents are so over joyed to send they're little graduate into the world of higher learning they forget what college is really like when they were attending.

The first day the freshmen arrives on that campus and the parents are gone, there are parties.

Some students are able to maintain they're focus and not stray into a houses that are jam packed with beer, assorted alchohals, and questionable substances but, most every college student has been to at least one of these parties. They are drawn to them like a moth to the flame.

I remember the feeling of the first week I attended Southwestern. I arrived at the dorms not quite sure what to expect. I knew there would be parties and that I would drink, there was no doubt about that. I just didn't know it would be so frequent.

After about a month of so of being in college and living in the dorms, my friend Devan, who lived in the apartment style dorm right next to mine, invited two of his close friends to come and stay for the weekend in to dorms with him. I remember it like it was yesterday, they drove ten hours from the eastern part of Oregon just to be there.

We had already decided that we were gonna go to the beach for our drunkin bomb fire. Since there had already been cases of students getting caught drinking at public beaches, we decided that we were going to climb down to one of the private ones. We took only three SUV's full of people and wood pallets and parked at the end of the beachside road and walked the rest of the way to the edge of the cliff and climbed down the rope to the beach. After getting the pallets and booze to the beach and starting our fire we started our night.

We were having a great time with no worries, we had our DD's, our warm fire and our drinks. I at the time was hanging out with Devan and his two friends, one was a DD and the other was already starting to show the signs of clear stupid drunkinness. Four of us were walking near the water when we saw a hand held spot light form one of the beach houses on the cliff scan the beach. Someone shouted "run back to the fire!" On arriving to the fire we decided that it would probly be a good idea if we went back to the dorms; so we put out the fire and climbed back up the rope. We sudenly noticed that we weren't all there. Devan's stupid drunkin friend had ran down the beach to the cove and climbed the ninty degree cliff that was in front of him. We combed the beach for almost an hour with our cell phones calling his name. The thing is that he was to drunk to realize that we weren't the cops trying to find him so we didn't find him until he heard Devan's voice and we had to climb back up the rope and over a light house fence just to get him back. As soon as we knew that everyone was safe and warm we went to the local 24 hour breakfast dinner to get some food.

Yeah, after telling my mom about this adventure, she admits that she didn't realize what I would be doing with my spare time. Man, I love college!

Puppy Mills

Many people are unaware of puppy mills. The Humane society has been working for years to stop this cruel practice and raise awareness of it's cruelty and the affects to the dogs.

The question one would ask upon hearing about puppy mills is, "what is a puppy mill and why are they so bad?" To answer that question I met with Janene Baker, an advocate for the Humane Society, and she explained that puppy mills are widely known as "puppy farms," making them seem very innocent and like they would be a good place for dogs to breed.

In these puppy mills the female dogs are forced to breed everytime they are in heat and when the puppies are born they have very little time with they're mother before they are weaned, resulting in poor nutrition and put into a cramped envirement with other dogs. Due to the conditions the puppies are exposed to, they often develope poor socializing skills and temperment issues. As the puppies grow older they often have respitory problems and weak bones in their hips and joints because of the bad transportation to pet shops as puppies.

Many pet shops are unaware that they have recieved they're puppies from puppy mill and the owners of these puppy mills sell them to pet shops to gain the largest profit possible on purebreds. Ways that you can help discourage the business of puppy mills is before you buy a new puppy:
Consider adoption at an animal shelter and not buying from a pet shop.

If choosing to buy from a breeder, see where the puppies have been born and bred.

Make sure that the breeder is more interested about the animals well being and not just selling them to you.

Let others know about the cruelty and affects of puppy mills.

There is power in numbers and no animal derserves to be treated with cruely. The Humane Society appreciates the help of those who care about animals and they're rights to good homes and a healthy, happy life.

My next article: Puppy mills

For my next column I have been inspired to write about puppy mills. Not to many people know what goes on in puppy mills or that they even exist. I am going to be writing this article to bring an awareness of these organizations and the health effects the dogs obtain.

Picture courtesy of Cheezylu's

The blog thing of this week....

So....yesterday was Easter Sunday. It was nice in side but rainy and windy outside. I woke up at around 10 a.m. which is strange because I was awake till four in the morning taking care of the drunkin group of friends at my house that night.....who thought it would be the coolest thing just to stay up all night and be really loud and attempt to exicute the moon walk for no apparent reason but to say that is what they did with their weekend. Anyways, I woke up at this time and was happy that eveyone had left and I would have a nice quiet Easter Sunday.
I got up and threw on some clothes, that didn't make me look like I had just rolled out of bed, and I went to Safeway to get some eggs and a color kit to dye eggs. To my surprise, there were no kits left; so I decided to go to Target......it was closed.....closed? So I decided to go to the Shop'n Cart. I figured that there weren't enough people to even shop in the run down store so there had to be color kits there. Sadly I was wrong.
I asked the woman at the counter if there were any color kits left and she just shook her head and told me to go to Walgreen's. Tired and ready to give up on my childhood tradition, I drove across town and strolled in to the Walgreens. I followed the aisles of candy that would soon be discounted and forgotten all the way to the egg coloring kits. There they were! Yes!
I grabbed the only one I could see wasn't made by Disney and headed for the egg aisle.
With my kit and my eggs I walked up to the counter and purchased my items. It surprised me when the woman said that I was lucky that the store hadn't cut the budget like the other stores.
Wow, budget cuts on childhood memories.

Three Things I Learned From Stephen King.

I simply must say that the first thing that I can remember learning from Stephen King is that the plot of the story isn't as important as the reader knowing who the characters are. I think that the reason people are scared when they read a horror novel or see a horror film is because they can find a character that they relate to and it scares them because they start to think that something horrible could happen to them as well. Getting to know who the characters are also helps the audience root for what jerk will be the "next to go" and who they want to see live till the end.

The second thing that I learned from Stephen King is to get the first draft done quickly. I have found this to be very good advise. Once you have a good idea of what your going to say everything else just seems to fall into place like it was meant to go there in the first place. Then when the first draft is finished then you can go back and play with the thoughts and make it the best it could possibly be.

And last but not least, the third thing that I have learned is that when you love what you do then you'll be happy. I certainly don't want to be working a job that I'm going to hate for the rest of my life. I want a job that will give me the room for creativity and not just doing the same repetitive thing everyday. I believe that Stephen King loves what he does and it shows in his work; I want to strive to be the same way and find what makes me happy in life.

Photo credit: meeg-el, courtesy of Flickr.com.