Today a 2007 movie was on TV called “Freedom Writers”. See the official website for more info.

I never heard about it before, just caught it by flipping through some TV channels.

Hilary Swank, a two-time Academy Award winner, plays Erin Gruwell, who is a first time English teacher at Wilson high school where they are dealing with severe tension, racial problems, street gangs, fights, etc.

She goes in with the idea of trying to change the system to turn street gang punks into intelligent articulate people, and meets resistance both with other school officials, and the students themselves. She is fighting a losing battle, and refuses to give up.

We’ve seen similar movies like this before, but at the same time, I have not seen one movie done as well as this.. I laughed, I cried, I cheered, and I got upset.

This movie moves your emotions and keeps you glued to the screen until its over. When it is over, it makes you feel good about who you are, and it gives you hope and the strength to reach your own goals. It is a very inspiring movie, I am very impressed.

So rent it on video if you can, buy it if you can’t find it. Share it with your friends and family, it is one of those “gems” that everyone should see..

Best of all, let me know what you think after you see it? Send me a private email or public blog comment here at http://lifeisfunny.freethrills.com

It is natural for parents to help their kids avoid the pitfalls and mistakes that they went through in their lives. They want to see their kids succeed. They want to help their kids be the best that they can be.. 

Finally, they admittedly want their kids to go farther in life, then the parents did themselves. They love their kids, have labored their entire lives to raise and guide them. They have a lot of time, effort, worries, frustrations, happiness and tears all spent and created in raising their children.

Our future generation, today’s children are part of this growing dilemma to make life easier and simpler.

Ever since the industrial revolution, and as technology progresses though, we’re creating life “aids” that avoid us from doing work.

Today’s society is lazy. Tomorrow’s generation will be even lazier.

Instead of milking the cows, we now buy milk at the store. Some people even get it delivered to their front door.

Instead of making ourselves a coffee in the morning which involves quite a lengthy procedure. Not only do we have to warm up the water, mix the ingredients, but now there is a cup to wash!!  No, instead we’ll just head to work, stop by a coffee shop drive thru, and idle for 15 minutes while someone makes our coffee for us, and we can throw out the cup when we’re done with it.

Instead of walking 3 miles down the road to see a friend, we hop in the car, or just phone, fax, or email.  We don’t even bother to phone them now, because that involves a whole conversation. No, we’ll just text them a sentence of what we wanted to say. 

If we wanted to watch a movie, we’d plan a night out. We’d go to the theatre, stand in line, buy a snack, sit down, watch the movie and come home.  As generations passed, we use to just go to the video store, rent a movie, watch it, and return it.  Today, we click buttons on a remote control because this way we don’t have to “go” anywhere. We can sit on our couch and stay there.

So what’s next?  I will tell you:

Instead of milk delivered to the door, we’ll probably have robots that will take it from the door to the fridge.

We won’t want coffee, because we’ll have vitamin patches stuck to our bodies, so what when we feel we want a coffee, the chemicals automatically instantly release from skin patch, making us feel that we’ve just enjoyed a coffee, thereby releasing dopamine to our brain. 

Instead of texting our friends, we’ll have new technology that can respond to our thoughts or voice, so that we don’t actually have to pickup a device and use our fingers to type, it will just “know” what we want to say, and to whom.

When we want to see a movie, we’ll be able to gaze up at the TV, say something trivial like “i want to see a movie, you know what I like” and that’s it. We won’t have to choose, search, or find anything.

This way, we can be spoiled lazy people — exactly what our previous generations have helped us become. This is our destiny of tomorrow.

This is how we’ll satisfy ourselves in the future. When we want something, a second later, our brain feels that we did actually receive it. This way there is no wasted time or effort. It will be instant gratification to our every want, 24×7.

Isn’t life funny and yet truly horrific at the same time?

Today, many people complain about crime in their neighborhood.

They are shocked that Police are slow to respond to certain situations. Understand this, the message that police are getting is that by the time they file all the paperwork necessary to prosecute a criminal, the accused is free on bail with a community service penalty.

Not only that, but if they read between the lines, traffic violation tickets bring IN revenue, and prosecuting the homeless thug COSTS revenue.

Therefore police are better off writing up violation traffic tickets for the working class, and LESS beneficial to the city when they arrest and prosecute a homeless person who is doing crime.

I remember once that I was near a crime scene where a $300 Television was stolen. There were very clear finger prints in the dust since the TV was in a storage room. When the officers attended to take the report, they basically issued a file number for the insurance company.

When the victim asked them “why don’t you take fingerprints? it’s obvious that their finger prints are right there”…

The officer responded “you lost a $300 Television. By the time we get forensics here, fingerprint, write the report, take it to court, prosecute, etc, it will cost the city almost $5,000 and thats IF we get a conviction, maybe more. It’s much cheaper for you to file your $300 claim with the insurance company and leave the city out of it”

So there you have it folks. If you are a career criminal and do thefts under $500 at a time, its cheaper for the cops (and the city) to avoid prosecuting you and let the burden by born by the law-biding citizen.

Naturally this is my opinion only, but you get the idea.

This year I decided not to plant a vegetable garden. I usually plant tomatoes ever year among other things..

However this spring has been the weirdest weather pattern ever. We keep going to  very cold and windy temperatures, way too much rain. The ground is too cold, and this means that plants will suffer and will lead to a very late harvest, maybe even too late, where the plants frost over before their fruit is ready to be picked.

Is this funny weather something that will happen every year now that Global Warming is here? (By the way, global warming doesn’t just mean warm weather. It can also mean weird weather patterns, like snow in the desert)

If this weather is so horrible for my home vegetable garden, this means commerical growers are going to have a hard time too. Expect your fruits and vegetables to cost a lot more in the stores this year if this is widespread.

I imagine summer will eventually get here, and then I will regret not starting my seedlings, but I’m going to wait this year out and see how it goes. There is always next year.

 I’m getting sick and tired of hearing that TV commercial for a career college that says “if she can do it, then you can do it” call now.

Well, I’m a man.  If she can menstruate, does that man I can menstruate too? If she can get pregnant can I?  Well then that basically shows us that the phrase “if she can do it, you can do it” does NOT hold true. So stop saying it?

Just because someone can do something, it does NOT mean you can do it too. So use a different stupid cliche or phrase on your TV ads, because I am sick of hearing this same one again and again and again.

I’ve just discovered that Diet Coke appears to be using a thinner plastic on 2L bottles. Traditionally I could pour a brand new 2L soda pop into a glass using only one hand. But now when you try to do it, the plastic buckles and the bottle starts bending.

I found this news article which says that Coke is using 5% less plastic in order to help stop global warming.

From my experience, it looks like a lot less than 5% has been removed from the new bottles.  I know since we’re talking about Global warming, we should be tolerant of these things…

But when I’m carrying a 12 pack of soda pop from the grocery store to my car, and the cardboard rips and pop cans start flying everywhere.. I think we’ve gone a little too far. 

…AND… here is the biggest question…

These soda pop maufacturers are using less plastic and less cardboard [for global warming reasons], but if they are using LESS, shouldn’t we be paying LESS too ?  If I have to go through the aggrivation of spilling my plastic bottle pop, or chasing cans rolling around in the parking lot, shouldn’t I also gain the benefit of cheaper packaging materials in my cost?

Here is a case where the soda pop maker WINS, and Global Warming “apparently” wins, and the rest of all lose.

I’m tired of cheap plastic bottles, thin cardboard boxes, and the mess it creates.

How many times have you sat at a railroad crossing, and wondered how much longer it would be before the train passes?

I usually want to shut my vehicle off, but I’m always worried that as soon as I do it, the last few train cars will go by…

If the train could signal a countdown timer that everyone could see, and it started counting down: 8min 32 secs.. I think a lot of people would shut off their vehicles once they realized how long the train would actually take..

I’m thinking of Global Warming here, and having 20 cars on each side of the tracks.. that’s a total of 40 vehicles sitting there idling and polluting our atmosphere.

A little thing like a countdown timer might actually give peace of mind to people that don’t want to get caught with their vehicle engine off and the train crossing re-opening. Soon as the timer got down to the last 45 seconds, people could start their engines again and feel comfortable doing so..

If you mathematically figure this out, with real data, it could mean a large savings.

40 cars at major crossings x 8 minutes of unnecessary idling x number of railroad crossings in North America that do not have a countdown timer = a lot of unnecessary pollution.

It’s just an idea — what do you think?