Thoughts on KONY 2012: the truth resists simplicity.

You probably live under a rock if you don't know about KONY 2012. As a blogger, I feel obligated to acknowledge it. Here is the gist of it from my moderately skeptical mind and I apologize if I offend people ahead of time (you've been warned):

An organization called Invisible Children that deals with child soldiers made this short documentary about the head honcho of evil, Joseph Kony, the lead guy who kidnaps thousands of children, and makes them soldiers simply to keep himself alive. This documentary oversimplifies the situation drastically. I can't help but feel skeptical of some of the information they give. Some of it just doesn't quite seem legit.

I'm familiar with this organization, as they came to my school at the beginning of the year, and they are great at raising awareness about the situation with their traveling teams in vans and documentaries. But (just mull this over in your brain) a little bit of googling determined that only 32% of their money actually goes overseas, definitely not a statistic they advertise.

I know about Kony. I know about the evil things he does, simply to save his own ass. I know that he should be stopped. But I don't understand how, after decades of this, 26 freaking years, the entire internet explodes with KONY 2012. It's easy to jump on a bandwagon to hate something evil, then give themselves a pat on the back. DAMN YOU SOCIETY. A viral video is a fantastic way to raise awareness, I'll give them that. But they need people who know what the hell they're doing (insert link to article here) to arrest him, not the entirety of the first world to know who this guy is and have no sweet clue what to do with this knowledge other than write "KONY 2012" as an irrelevant comment on a youtube video. Well, I suppose raising money might be nice too, if, you know, you give it to someone other than Invisible Children. 

America, are you so shallow that stopping the thousands of voiceless people being killed and maimed is only important if your people want it? Because that's what that documentary kind of told me. I kind of don't believe it.

Maybe it's because I'm Canadian. Je ne comprende pas, mes amies.

No offense America.

Sometimes I throw arguments out there so somebody might be able to prove me otherwise.That the world is simplistic. I took World Issues, I lived in Africa: I know otherwise. Now that I've raged about a controversial subject, feel like a dick and have possibly have shattered your illusions, I can say that the truth resists simplicity.
Love,
-J-

Edit: I came across this article  shared on Facebook and it sums up much of what I feel about this situation.

March break

March Break has proved to be pretty good so far. I got go to the mall with Katie, who always seems to be working, slept at Andrea's house, who I only see once every few months and now I'm hanging out with Noah, who came down for a few days. I'm beginning to stop being a hermit.

The only bad thing so far is this random stomach pain that keeps happening at random. I have no idea what is causing this. Maybe my stomach is imploding on itself, because that's what it feels like.
Love,
-J-

In Physics121, the nerds win. Not so on the weekends.

Today I jokingly suggested that we watch an episode of Doctor Who in physics, and my teacher whipped out a hard drive, skeptically asked me if I'd actually seen an episode (all 6 seasons since 2005, BA BAM) and picked the episode "Victory of the Daleks." My physics class actually seemed to like it. 

I hope that I today I helped defy nerd stereotypes and misunderstandings about the wonderful show that is Doctor Who.

I'm now celebrating by beginning March break, a Friday night spent at home, fangirling about Benedict Cumberbatch. Which kind of does absolutely nothing for nerd stereotypes.  

However, I think myself in a better situation in life than the guy with a massive bag of weed on the bus. By massive, I mean it was like a sandwich bag full, being passed around a few guys with great pride. These guys have been on my bus for at least two years I'm yet to hear them have an intelligent conversation.

 Love,
-J-

Choir and unorthadox bowling FTW.

Today was a choir workshop thing for all the choirs from nearby districts who so chose to come. Some schools were really into it and brought the majority of their choirs, but others, like mine, only brought those who felt like it. We ended up with no tenors, and were ready to perform and let everybody believe we are not nearly as kickass as we actually are. Through a series of events, we teleported three tenors to the workshop and regained our sense of self worth. But regaining our sense of self worth wasn't hard after one choir used tracks for all their songs.

A lot of the music we worked on as a huge group was painfully unexciting, especially because one of the choir directors was, to put it kindly, a pompous ass. The conclusions that I have come to is that I managed to go to the one school nearby with a choir that's fun, plays games, jokes often, doesn't take itself too seriously and whose songs do not all revolve around death or Latin.

This was further shown by when we went bowling in the evening. They herded about 200 choir kids into a empty bowling alley rather unchanged since the 60's. About ten of us began the rather unorthodox practice of all throwing balls at the pins until they had all fallen down. However, this was accompanied by us cheering on the ball ("FUTZ! FUTZ! FUTZ"- long story), dancing, yelling, the occassional spontaneous game of Kung-fu and just generally causing a scene. Normal bowling is too mainstream for us?

I love choir people so much. The choir trip to Boston in April is going to be so much fun. And speaking of the Boston trip, I'm getting my income tax back right before that, about $300 in total. I have spending money for Boston, which is awesome because I legitimately had no idea where I was going to get it. 

March break next week, yes. 
Love,
-J-