Are blogs social? Perhaps. There are two ways I view blogs: Professional writing and publication, and personal communication. I view blogs (as the savior of our English language on the internet) as a kind of publication because professional and well written blogs can be as useful as printed literature. I can read it, cite it, and check its sources. I feel blogs still pursue the high end of social communication. Complete information and feelings can be expressed to the receiving parties (readers) and the sender (the author). I still feel this way because there is always something so much more intense and personal about the replies I get on my blog rather than a wall post or a tweet. A group of friends hopped on Xanga in early 2005, and for the last three years have moved away, married, or traveled abroad, but each person in this group faithfully blogs and replies. This is a more complete social network than just skimming over people’s facebook status’ or seeing what netflix moving they’ve just ordered.

But maybe it’s not friendfeed’s fault. Maybe blogs should move only into the professional realm. And just maybe the reason we have superficial communication is because of our 160 character mass-texting generation.

I write so much I feel as though I’m blogging your comment system. Thanks

There are tons of volunteers from across the country cleaning up our city, and here I am just working everyday, and carrying on. I mean, how selfish is that? What happened to stopping, gathering together and helping your neighbor? Has this happened? Definitely. Have I helped? Hardly at all.

I still look out my fifth story window, and can see in my mind’s eye the overlapped image of Coe Rd completely submerged. It was a paranoid anxiety that took my over yesterday when my building lost power yesterday. The same morning light, the same black, empty halls… but this time no water coming up to the back of the doorstep.

When driving downtown at night, it’s something I would imagine from a deserted town, or a film set for a post-apocalyptic film. The brightest part of downtown is completely pitch black, darker than the loneliest highway roads. With your headlights the reflection catches your eyes; smeared window fronts, washed-out brick, and lifeless neon signs. Throughout the city are mounds of priceless memories, unpurchased merchandise, and countless pieces of people’s homes.

On Coe Rd is a second hand store. After the flood, people volunteered to pick up hundreds of pieces of clothing. Clothes are stacked, higher than the small brick shop, sits on the curb, molding in a large pile waiting for the city to relocate it to a landfill.

I work at a government funded academic camp for high school students. The camp is at Coe College, which sits just at the edge of the 500 yr flood plain. We still are trying to recover from just having one building flooded (which, is the building that held 1/2 of the campus’ circuits ). I’ve been living on the fifth floor of a dorm building for five weeks now without air conditioning or hot water, living with the high school students, and am next to the housed volunteers who live in the same conditions.

Friday, the day after the “Epic Surge”, it was more of a shocking and exciting, “I have to see it for myself” attitude that I held, and raced to go downtown to see the flood. Just this past Independence Day I had the day to myself, and thought about what I’d do.

I love walking downtown to the confectionery on 5th &3rd, picking up some fudge, grabbing a smoothie at the Blue Strawberry and hanging out at the downtown park. I started heading south, and stopped. There is nothing there anymore. Nothing that allured the pedestrians exists. I turned around and walked 20 blocks north to my friend’s apartment. I can hardly believe all the entertainment is now at Edgewood or Collins.

I wanted to spend every Thursday night at the Piano Bar. I was excited to show freshmen the downtown life. I wanted to get away from campus and eat a delicious greek restaurant. I have so many great memories of delicious food and friendship at Brick’s. I wanted to take my friends to the Czech Village to enjoy the fine life of Czech desserts.

I miss the smell of Crunchberries wafting from the Quaker Oats factory, instead of the putrid smell of the foul river and molding city blocks.

When it rains I look at puddles on the sidewalk and think of the flooding. When grey clouds loom over 380 east outside my window I think of how the city I started to call “home” was submerged.

It’s something to cry about, I think. I don’t know why to cry, but there is something so intense about and personal about these things… I feel like the flood shocked me, and the receding waters sucked away my memories.

The vivid color of my memories were utterly soluble….

The soundtrack to WALL*E was breathtaking. I’ve already purchased the soundtrack, and have favourited ( <- look, a brand new verb!) most songs with Eva in it.

My friend commented on the fact that although this was an amazing Pixar movie, he left without any happy feelings. He became so depressed at the idea that society had digressed so far, and that our planet was inhabitable.

I did feel that there were two parts of the film, but I did enjoy the commentary in the 2nd half. Even today I feel that people are more involved in the screen before them than the people around them, and yes, our landfills are overflowing, and yes, we are polluting our skies… and yes, we are always assuming we’ll create technology to fix it all.

I feel that the happy credit ending makes up for the depression of seeing society degrade.

Also, I think the second half of the film is something to reflect on: The robots in this film are more “human” than the actual organic beings. Robots were with quirks and personality, while humans interacted only though a screen, did repetitive tasks, and were (in my opinion) hardly self-aware, and completely unaware of the relationship to things around them if they were not hardwired (via the chair) to it. Perhaps our dislike of the second half is a good motivation for us to change.

If you stayed through the credits (which you always should in Pixar movies) you would have seen an 8-bit version of the movie. I would really love to play that game.

I’m no movie buff, but I thought Wall E and Eva as characters were very well created, and the animation was mind blowing. I probably enjoyed the characters themselves more than the plot.

As for the social commentary, I thought it was fairly accurate. That’s way off in the future, but I definitely see us heading in that direction.

I agree this summer has some great movies! Haven’t been able to see all the ones I wanted, but am hoping to catch Get Smart soon.