Heather's 2014 academically

"Used to be a major scale
But the melody went stale,
Musical cacophony let
Insy Winsy spider free.

[...]

Could never tell you what happened
The day I turned seventeen,
The rise of a king and the fall of a queen,
Oh, seventeen,
Seventeen."

"Seventeen" - Marina And The Diamonds

 

It was actually harder than that...

If someone asked me how 2014 would be in 2013, I would have answered it could never ever get worse so 2014 had to be better... Well, no. I could never imagine what was waiting for me after that innocent first term when I first failed a subject: Geography, concretely.

So that hopeful new year started actually quite well: it seemed I was going to fix my year and end up 3rd of ESO like a pro... Nothing further from reality: that second term brought me an even more complicated situation with two failed subjects: even though I had retaken Geography, Catalan and P.E. were now trying to make me give up and actually doing so, as it was proven in the third term, when Geography, Arts and P.E. sent me to retakes in September.

So the nice part of 2014 started for me in June. Holidays, sun, beaches, some retake homework; basically, summer. But that summer was actually good: though I couldn't use computers, I spent really good moments with my Wii and I actually discovered doing homework CAN be nice! I must confess most "My World" entries on this blog come from thoughts from the so mentioned summer.

After those three months of finetune.com (which has unfortunately stopped working) for Wii, Geography homework and plastic arts a new hope shined beyond my eyes: 4th of ESO! That was my chance! So it was a really good first term, full of great moments with old and new friends and... this blog! It was all perfect, everything was going awesome... until that week... Yeah, the first week of December completely wrecked the last shards of academic self esteem I had, and I actually ended up failing Spanish and Catalan.

But now I know what I can do to avoid this happening again: now I know the price of my mistakes and where they come from. I WILL end up 4th of ESO like the pro I really am and nothing is going to keep me from doing so!

A little bit of Spanish History for proud Spanish people

[AUDIO COULD NOT BE FOUND]

"You say that love is not that easy
And that’s the lesson that you teach me
So hypocritical, overly cynical
I’m sick and tired of all your preaching"

"Hypocrates" - Marina And The Diamonds
 

It's not really rare to hear stupidities such as "Spain has been a really great nation until the 2008 crisis!" from people who can't really look beyond their nose. OK, it is true that Spain used to culturally destroy regions all over the world, but it doesn't really mean it was a "great nation". No, it has never been good as a nation: culturally, even America is far beyond Spain, and TV shows it quite well; nowadays, success in Spain is equal to dumbness and... overall, being a scumbag.

But let's focus on the twentieth century: Spain has suffered the most absurd dictatorship ever, established by the least charismatic being ever... which was FORTY YEARS LONG! Wow, next time this happens, let's let them rape our country a little bit longer, okay?

Can I puke already?

And people still forget the most funny parts! Did you know a nuclear bomb was thrown during that period? Yes, it's referred as The 1966 Palomares B-52 Crash, an "error" committed by the U.S. Air Force which led a nuke to be dropped near Murcia; an accident, of course! IT WAS NOT MADE TO SCARE ANY DICTATOR, NO, IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT! And everyone believed that and actually forgot it! Yay! The funniest part of all of it was by far when Spanish politicians bathed in Palomares to show people there was no danger (and THEY WERE NOT FORCED BY ANYONE, OF COURSE!)... By the way, that has NO RELATIONSHIP with radioactivity found in waters and fields in Murcia decades later!

OK, but the sixties and Franco are quite far from today, aren't they? Let's move to the 80's, concretely to 1983. From the mentioned year to 1987 Spain had a fun fun thing called Grupos Antiterroristas de Liberación or GAL, groups of para-policemen committing terrorism themselves to "stop the terrorists of ETA", led by the PSOE (the two most popular political parties in Spain are assassins, deal with it) and financed by important officials within the Spanish Interior Ministry.

Source: Wikipedia (CLICK TO EXTEND)

And, once again, there's a political background behind these facts: terrorism was just an excuse, all they wanted to erase was Basque nationalist activism. Shame on you, PSOE.

But this is not really related to today, is it? Well, after the mentioned PSOE legislature, a PP (aka. children of Franco) legislature came out with a man called Aznar. What this man did was basically raising the housing bubble higher and higher so it could explode in the next president's face. And it did; in 2004, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, from PSOE, got covered with Aznar's sh*t and, a few years later, BOOM! CRISIS! And that's basically the reason why we're how we are right now, heh.

It is true that 1966 is the furthest I can rewind (my sources are limited!), but I wonder what would happen if someone spent some time on collecting and writing these things since much earlier... It would be very funny, I'm sure.

We live in Europe's stinky belly button, deal with it.

Is gender necessary?

"Well I, I wanna tell you a secret
You can take your double standard love and keep it"

"Hermit The Frog" - Marina And The Diamonds
 

So far, I've written about male and female stereotypes (entry about this) and the great fault in usual female behavior when it comes to relationships (entry about this). But, what's the origin of all these problems? Do we really need to separate between men and women? Well, I would say no: nowadays, we've got so many alternatives that make biologically straight pairs useless; when we fall in love with someone we do it because of a person, not because of a man or a woman.

But, then, why have we spent more than fifty centuries conserving that useless division? Regardless of religious issues during History, the most evident reason why we cut our society in between two genders is the domination of one of them. In modern times, the most common situation (and pretty much the only one, to be
honest) is the ownage men do on women, giving to half of population some kind of privilege but also chains and figurated prisons to the other half.

And, eventually, women opened those prisons!

Luckily, since the nineteenth century, women started to push the walls of those prisons and set themselves free progressively. That's why I'm totally sure the division between men and women is not benefitting anyone anymore, so, why don't we just erase it from society? It's good for nothing and it hurts half of the world's population. What if I like a diva's dress and I want to wear it along with my male attributes? Is it a crime? Of course it isn't my case, I just want to get rid of those attributes, but I'm sure you understand my point: there is no such situation as one where gender stereotypes are useful or good: if you truly loved your lover, you wouldn't care about their sex or gender (which is NOT the same, since gender is a social construction while sex is a biological truth).

That's why, here and now, I want to say: I am NOT A TRANSGENDER, I am TRANSSEXUAL. I don't care about my gender anymore, I don't want to belong to the female gender since the female gender is a social deillusion. I just want to be a sexually female being: I'm talking about sex, not gender; sex is having a vag*na while gender is being one.

[Christmas Special] Soft Sell and Hard Sell

"Primadonna girl, yeah
All I ever wanted was the world
I can't help that I need it all
The primadonna life, the rise and fall

[...]

Would you do anything for me?
Buy a big diamond ring for me?"

"Primadonna" - Marina And The Diamonds
  

For today's task, since it's the last English blog session before Christmas holidays, we've been asked to do a Christmas special. Concretely, we had to look up for the difference between soft sell and hard sell (which are marketing techniques) and examples (ads) for each.

Soft sell is considered to be the kind of advertising which uses friendly, subtle or casual sales messages, leading to a less conditioning way of publicity. It's also considered the most effective way of persuasion, since it's been proven that costumers feel so much less irritated than with hard sell.

Hard sell, as an opposition to soft sell, is the kind of advertising which uses a direct, forceful and evident sales message, which has been proven to be more likely to irritate costumers.

 Here are some examples, one for each concept:

I would say this is quite a good example of a Christmas ad using hard sell, since the publicised product is shown since the start of the advertisement and is seen several times during its progress.

Though Christmas is not explicitly a topic of this advert, I would say it is a good example of a Christmas ad using soft sell. Not only because funny stuff just can't be as irritating as hard sell publicity, but also because the product (in this case, the institution) is not shown until the end.

Why do men cheat on women?

"Who are those great looking dolls?
It's quick curl Barbie and mod hair Ken
But what do I do with my old Barbie?
Su-Barbie-A
Su-Barbie-A
(Oh Yeah) Su-Barbie-A
If you're going to tell me you don't like this dress
I'm sticking my head right in the oven"

"Part 5: SU-Barbie-A" - Marina And The Diamonds

There isn't any possibility for someone to do something as wrong as cheating on their pair without any reason or excuse, so I've been thinking: do wives and girlfriends do something that repulses husbands and boyfriends? Well, every person is completely different, but I can see some similarities on cheated wives and girlfriends' way to act in pair, so I would say they do.

To understand this, we need to take a look at genre stereotypes (entry about this): we've reached a point in which housewives are just trying to be likable to their man, objectifying themselves and becoming less of a person, getting friendless and staying all day at home.

When a man is looking for a woman, he's obviously looking for a person, someone in the same level to share their lives with. So once he's dealing with an object, then, there are two possibilities: him using that object, which leads to mistreating and gender abuse, or him getting frustrated, trying to make his woman happier to personify her and, if that doesn't work, forsaking her and looking for a true person. Both cases, unless the second one works, lead to cheating.

What I mean with this entry is that, if girls are really looking for a boy to share their lives together, they shouldn't be getting themselves below their boyfriend or husband: they have to be as independent as their man is, having their own lives and enjoying their own moments. It's the only way to make a man happy: if he truly loves you, he will only be happy if you are, and being an object will only get you depressed and suicidal.

XP 3D and... hype

"Hollywood infected your brain
You wanted kissing in the rain
Living in a movie scene
Puking american dreams"
"Hollywood" - Marina And The Diamonds

For this task, I'm publishing here what I said in the oral presentation about my favourite horror movie:

Slide 1 - Presentation

Hi! As most of you already know, I'm Heather and I'm here to speak about my favourite horror movie. As I said several times earlier during this project, I don't really like horror films, and the one I'm talking about today is not an exception.

The movie I'm referring to is called XP, or XP 3D. It's a Spanish movie which came out in 2012. It had an enormous hype back then, and everyone spent a lot of money on it... Luckily, it was completely forgotten within less than seven months (or even less than that).

Slide 2 - Plot

The movie is about a group of university students who, even though they are studying science, decide to explore a forsaken place because of some paranormal "facts" which had taken place there.

All of this gets messed up when an hypnosis made by the ugliest one of the boys (yes, that is important) is tested on one of the girls (the most known of the actresses, of course). Then said girl starts to see a professor of the university doing not-really-kind things.

Slide 3 - Why did I like the movie?

Oh, that's very simple: I didn't. As a Spanish movie, it shows the kind of crap Spain is able to do when a cinema executive is farting hard enough: it's just based in gore, distasteful scenes and incredibly avoidable situations. I would swear a huge part of my brain died during the movie, which was not precisely short.

I was SO glad she was dead...

Slide 4 - Favourite moment

My favourite moment from all of the movie is, by far, the death of Belén. That c*nt needed to die somehow, she was just there because of her... attributes, and she didn't do absolutely anything good apart from wearing tight clothes and trying to copulate indirectly with the most stereotyped actor.

She just decided to go alone, so she deserved it.

[Questionnaire] The Comic Relief

"I was so cruel
(He was so kind)
Why did I feel I had to leave you behind?
(But he was so sweet)"

"Why did you stay?" - The Pipettes

So, like in the previous three questionnaires, this task belongs to the study of the history of horror. This one in particular, deals about something about modern horror movies: the Comic Relief. A Comic Relief is a funny moment inside a tension scene. Here is the questionnaire for today:

1→ What is the comic relief?
A comic relief is a funny moment put in a tension scene to relieve the viewers' feeling of fear.

2→ Why is it often used in horror films?
Because otherwise horror movies would get viewers distressed and they wouldn't sell as they do.

3→ Do you remember laughing in horror films? Can you think of an example?
I honestly never laughed in horror movies. Actually, I got really surprised when I heard about the existence of comic reliefs in class.