Foreigners To The Rescue Of Cinematic Vampires?

Throughout recent years I have always been a fan of the horror genre in films and especially films which deal with my favorite groups of the undead; vampires and zombies. However to my dismay I've noticed a steady sharp decline in the amount and quality of both films, but now zombies are on their way back to the top however vampires are still suffering and have even lost their terrifying nature due to Stephanie Meyer and her Twilight series. The last fairly decent vampire film I had seen was "30 Days of Night" yet since then it has been all about Twilight and slowly our youth is forgetting the true nature of the vampire. There is hope my friends for our creatures of the night! Thanks to Tomas Alfredson of Sweden releasing his recent film "Let the Right One In" and the upcoming South Korean film "Thirst" by Chan-wook Park I finally am seeing that perhaps it is the foreign sector which bring back that powerful dark punch that vampires once had on the silver screen. Though sadly many Americans will not see these films originally I am sure they will watch the remakes which is the American way. Let the Right One In already has a remake in progress and I am sure shortly following the release of Thirst Americans will steal that one too. Until then do your part watch these movies and make at least one smartass remark to anyone caught reading or watching anything that has to do with Twilight.

The Origin Of The Knock-Knock Joke

Thoughts on Groupwork

Having spent the last 9 months of my youthful life here in the lovely city of Monterrey I have also been studying at Tec De Monterrey. I find most of my courses mildly amusing, however I discovered something interesting about them. Many classes here heavily encourage group work. Now I am currently in my 17th year of education (perhaps 19th if you count the extra year of kindergarten and pre-school) and in all my years I have always found the idea of "group" work to be like the idea of "communism" only good on paper or in theory. At least here in Tec the idea of groupwork is so heavily prevelant because the administrators believe it will encourage students to become more social which will in theory better prepare them for the professional working world where groupwork is a common practice.

Though here is my dilemma and critique of groupwork. In general I have found two common outcomes with teamwork and that is:

1) a few members of the group do most of the work while the others do nothing and all receive the same grade for unequal shares of work.

2) the teammates take a large assignment and divide it into smaller portions in which all team members then proceed to do their small portion and later bring all the pieces together in a small team member shortly before the due date.

I am not saying that the chance of a group actually working together throughout the entire process as a true group and everyone doing their equal part is not possible it's just not that likely. In the end the first outcome only seeks to teach hardworking students that their work is in vain because lazy people will take the credit and it teaches lazy people to just pass their work off on others and take the credit for it. The next outcome is just ironic because in the end the "group" is doing the work independently and the only outcome of making it a group assignment was to make it possible to take a large independent project into something much easier and smaller. However both outcomes do not promote the ideals those who believe in groupwork are striving for. For this reason I think groupwork in general is just silly...

Fishsticks vs. Fishdicks

Having watched the newest episode of South Park entitled Fishsticks and learning the following joke:

Person 1: Hello (Insert Name) Do you like fishsticks?
Person 2: Why yes I love them!
Person 1: Do you like to put fishsticks in your mouth?
Person 2: Why yes I do!
Person 1: What are you a gayfish!??

Indeed the joke was quite clever and I find myself not able to say the word fishstick without hearing fishdick and it does make me wonder how many other words exist like this that I have just not noticed their closer similarity to other funny phrases like this. So indeed I fear for the rest of my life though I did not eat many fishsticks (i don't really like fish in general) i will forever think of them as like hotdogs another food that resembles a penis and will truly feel like a gayfish when I do eat them.