V1 Dogtown

There were a few kids named Stacy, Tony, and Jay. These three were really good friends. They lived in California near Venice beach. These three really liked to surf. They would meet up at the dock and go surf. Then one day the local skate shop owner Skip called them up. They went to Skip's skate shop called Zephyr to see what he had to say. He told them about these new polyurethane wheels that he received and wanted them to try them out. The boys all put them on their skateboards and went out to skate. The way the new wheels were they could carve the pavement like they could carve the waves. This completely changed the way they could skate. This made Skip decide to make a new skate team to add to his surf team. Since they were skating for Zephyr skate team they decided to call themselves the Z-boys. The Z-boys went out and started winning competitions as a team, but shortly after they started getting big the boys wanted to get bigger and bigger. They all tried to get into the spot light, but there was only room for one of them, and there was a really big championship coming up. The boys thought that this would be the best thing to see who the best was. Halfway through the championship Tony got into a fight and was sent to the hospital and this halted his skating career. Stacy went on to win the championship. This was the turning point in his career. Stacy got the money and kept skating like the other two, but something else happened in his mind. He wanted to be the head of a company, so he went out and made one. Powell Peralta. If you know anything about the skateboarding world you would know this was basically a summery of the movie Lords of Dogtown. I highly recommend you watch this movie.

Thinking U1 U2

This blog is going to be a little different than usual. I’m going to use my words to describe my feelings about social media. I cannot stand the direction that social media is going. It seems like everything is starting to get too personal. Google and Facebook are guilty of this. The internet was made to make everything a lot easier, but it seems like it’s been used more for invading people’s privacy. If people had a better sense of what was going on than this would all probably stop. Nobody asks why this happens. Google started off very helpful, but it seems like they’re trying to control the world with all the companies they’re buying and how much they’ve been expanding. Google is definitely becoming a monopoly, and I believe it should be time for someone to step in and stop them. Google recently purchased YouTube. That’s also a very heavily populated website. Google is making money off the ads from the website. They are literally trying to take over the internet and smaller search engines like Bing don’t have a chance. They are almost the same thing, but Google has more users which brings in more money for them and they get to buy more online property to make even more money. Amazon started looking into robotics to deliver their packages which would make deliveries happen a lot faster and it would also make it more efficient because they wouldn’t have to send out trucks anymore because the electronic helicopters can deliver the packages instead of sending out the trucks. This I assume threated Google, so they went out and purchased 8 electronic companies the most prominent of them being Boston Dynamics. If you don’t know anything about Boston Dynamics I’ll explain what they make real quick. They make electronic moving animals basically. I recommend you look them up because my description isn’t doing them must justice. The thing with this is Google now owns them. Google can have them make anything for them. Why does Google need these companies? What are they trying to make with all of these electronic companies? They have no need to deliver anything with them. They could have picked up this company to make sure that Amazon wouldn’t. I just don’t understand why Google needs all this stuff. It doesn’t even matter to them. They pretty much just want to control everything. I got really sidetracked. Back to social media. It seems like no one can think for themselves anymore. Yesterday on Instgram there was a picture that went around regarding the privacy policy. Someone made a fake picture so they could get a lot of uses of their hashtag. It was so dumb. It seemed like I was the only one that actually checked my privacy policy. The picture that was used was not anywhere in the privacy policy. Social media works in magical ways because one person decides to do this, and then next thing you know you have something trending. About half of my followers put this picture up, and I proceeded to put up a picture about how dumb they look because they all used this fake picture. If everyone that seen this picture just actually checked their privacy policy the picture never would have been around. It was literally a waste of time because no one at all needed to put up this picture. Social media is destroying people’s free thinking because everyone decides to just follow the crowd. If people would either try to go against the crowd or only following the crowd when they know the real details life would be so much better.

T1 T2 Rico's story

Rico liked to have fun and go to parties. He made a few poor choices and ended up losing his job. He started doing drugs and ended up getting addicted to crack. He started dating this girl named Tesha, and he moved in with her. They had no money between the two of them, so Rico thought it would be a good plan to rob a bank. They got in the car and drove to the bank. Rico told Tesha to stay in the car and he ran in the bank and pulled out his gun and told everyone to get down. He got his money are ran out the door. He got to his car, but Tesha wasn't in the car. Rico turned around and saw Tesha with a badge and handcuffs. Rico went to jail. He was going to be facing some hard time. His cell mate's name was Pedro. Rico and Pedro became friends and Pedro told Rico that he knew how to make money. Pedro told Rico that he would pay for his bond if he would work for him. Rico got out and started selling for Pedro. A few weeks past and Rico told Pedro that he was making money. Pedro said he gets out of jail in a couple days. Pedro told Rico he would need to borrow some money. Rico said of course. Rico was on his way home when he got pulled over. It was Tesha. Rico started going crazy and pulled out his gun. He shot her and got out of there. The cops were looking for him when Rico gets a call from Pedro. Pedro told him he was out of jail and that he needed money. Rico told him that the cops were after him. Pedro said don’t worry about it and come to Brazil with me. Rico agreed and went to Brazil with Pedro. Rico bought a house and continued to sell drugs and party. He wasn’t worried about the cops until he met this girl named Nikki. Rico thought Nikki was perfect for him and they went out selling drugs together. About a week goes by of them talking and selling when Rico told Nikki all about what happened in America. Nikki told Rico she had to leave for a little while. The next thing Rico knows about 5 cop cars roll up on him. He started going crazy and did a line and ran out the door. He started sending out bullets and got shot about 5 times. That didn’t stop Rico. He made it to his car and made it to Pedro’s house. Pedro was amazed that Rico was still alive. Rico was freaking out telling Pedro everything that happened. Rico told Pedro that he left his girl Nikki at the house. Pedro knew a girl named Nikki and asked Rico about her. Pedro started freaking out and pulled out his gun and shot Rico in the head. Rico miraculously survived and was at the hospital. The doctors thought that he wouldn’t be able to walk ever again. Rico started getting better. Rico told the doctors he was going to go home, but they said no. Rico was sentenced to do time for killing Tesha. Pedro thought that Rico was working with the cops when he was with Nikki. Pedro realized that he wasn’t, so he made a few phone calls. Rico was on the jail bus on the way to jail. The next thing Rico knew there were cars surrounding the bus and there were explosions. The bus stopped and there was a lot of shooting. Rico turned around and it was Pedro. Pedro broke off Rico’s cuffs and they ran off the bus. They were dodging bullets and made it to Pedro’s Audi R8. They got out of there and made it back to Pedro’s plane and flew to Brazil. Rico and Pedro stayed really quiet and they let the heat blow past. They lived happily ever after.

Changing The World S2

This story is going to be about changing the world. This tale is centered around a man named Johnny Saltwater and his wife Margret Saltwater. Johnny and Margret both had no experiences in changing the world, but they decided it was time for a change. They started attending town meetings together and listening in on how people voiced their opinions. They wanted to know how to make their opinion known, but at the same time they wanted to be respectful. This was the hard part for the two of them. They both really liked to be correct. They would try anything to prove their point even if they knew they were wrong. After about two years of studying how to change the world they went out and did it. They started locally and eventually moved up to nationally then finally worldly. They started questioning local laws and local taxes. They slowly but surely started to gain attention from the media and they began to get support from neighboring towns, and even states. Their names were becoming so known even the president heard about them. He put them in a speech saying that's how most Americans should be. This shocked the nation. No one would have expected the president to say that because they are going against what laws he passed, but everyone just assumed that some laws he had to sign and he had his hands tied. Throughout their time caning the world they started drifting apart. They didn't have feelings for each other anymore because they were both only focused on power and changing the world that they lost sight of who they both fell in love with. They never even noticed their feelings go away because they were so busy working. They rarely talked unless it was about upcoming meetings. Then one day Johnny looked at his wife and barely recognized her anymore. He sat down and thought about it. They talked about what they wanted to do. They decided to keep going on with the meetings and drifting apart. They were hoping to eventually find love in each other after changing the world. The moral of this story is that sometimes you have to put feelings behind you if you're doing the right thing.

The Artist S1

A woman named Sally Shiner was an aspiring artist. She wanted to paint pictures of everything. She would spend all of her money on art supplies to feed her addiction. Some people like to paint, but Sally was different Sally was addicted. She couldn't survive without painting. If she went a day without painting she would get physically ill. She wouldn't be able to sleep or eat. Sally was slowly but surly losing her interest in painting. It's not that she didn't want to paint, it's that she painted everything she could. She painted every item in her apartment and every tree at the park. She even did the not so original fruit in a basket painting. She started to feel under the weather, so she went out and went on a nice long walk. She ended up at this beautiful waterfall. She started to paint it when she saw something rather peculiar. She decided to leave her art supplies at the bottom of the waterfall. She climbed her way up to the top of the water fall and found a little dog. It looked hurt, so she decided to help it. She brought it back down and rushed it to the closest vet. She let them take care of the dog. When the vet came out he had bad news. He told Sally that the dog only had about an hour left to live. Sally was so hurt even though she just met the dog. She decided to paint the dog. The only problem was she left her art supplies at the bottom of the waterfall, so she ran to the local art supply depot which was next door and she bought all new stuff and rushed back. On her way out she seen a spot to donate money to all the vet shops, so she put all the money she had in there. Then rushed back. She painted the best picture she ever had. The dog sadly passed and an art critic was in the vet shop and offered 1 million dollars for the painting, but Sally said no because she always wanted to remember the dog that saved her life. The lesson of this story is not to let money get in the way of feelings.

The Snowman Q2

It was the season of winter back in 2009, and three kids were bored one day. They all decided to get together and go sledding at the local park. They got all their gear on and left for the park. They all met up at around noon. They were really excited to go sledding, but when they all walked up to the big hill there was way too many people there for their likings. They didn’t really know what else to do. They didn’t want to go sledding with all the other kids, so they decided to build a snowman. None of them knew how to build one. Then out of nowhere this kid came out of the woods flipping a coin and said I know how to build a snowman. He then told them about how to make one and all the kids seemed to understand how to build a snowman so they built it. Then the mysterious kid left, but before he left he gave the other kids two coins to put in as the eyes. The kids were confused at first, but they decided to listen to the kid. They finished up the snowman and put the coins in the eyes. Next thing they knew the snowman came alive and turned into Frosty the snowman! I’m just kidding. What really happened was the coins would not stay in the snow so they decided to spit on the coins to make them stick next thing they knew the whole snowman turned into all coins. The kids didn’t know how to react to the coins so they decided to all start grabbing them, but then they decided they should leave a little pile of coins for the boy who gave them the original two coins, so what to take away from this story is to always remember the people who helped you get your wealth.

The Man Who Never Said Yes Q1

Larry Hotwater was a profound business man who made a lot of money being a financial planner, but for him to be successful at this job he had to be a jerk most of the time. He never meant to do it, but he signed a contract never allowing him to say yes again. This made it a lot harder for him to make sales because he couldn’t say yes. He would have to find a way to make sales with no. He wouldn’t have signed the contract if he knew this was in the fine print, but he had to stick with it. He thought about quitting his job and moving to another company, but his pay increase was incredible. The only problem he had was commission. The commission he would make was a very large part of his income. He tried to have a few companies match his current pay and his commission percent, but no other place was even close. He had to make the hard decision of sticking with his current company and finding a way around the not being able to say yes rule. He wrote up questions for his clients to ask. Instead of them asking is this my best bet? He had them ask is there any other plan available for me? This is how he could say no and still make sales. It was a very clever plan he came up with, but most of the clients were confused why he refused to say yes. His answer was he didn’t want to break a contract he was involved that would make the company stronger. This made clients seem to understand it a little more, but then he thought of the best excuse ever. He started telling them that he had to make it fair for all the other financial planners to make a deal. All the clients liked this boldness and in the end his sales increased along with his income.