Naps

     Who doesn't like naps? When I was little, my parents always made me take naps, and I hated them! Well now, I can't get enough of them. It's kind of like when you get to a certain age, you switch over from not wanting naps, to begging you parents if you could just sleep in a little more. I believe that teens and young adults should get more sleep, and even try to work in a few naps here and there.

     Now of course that doesn't mean that you should take naps if you already don't do anything useful, but for those of us who are full time students, work, and do after school activities, I say sleep it up! Grab a nap whenever you can, because trust me, they don't come often. 

     I think most of the problem is, that students tend to push themselves to their sleeping limit. Once college starts, the procrastination gets bigger. Procrastination is the root of this problem. Because we procrastinate, we push off our sleep due to last minute cram sessions or homework that is due tomorrow. We think that since we are young, our bodies can handle it. I'm not gonna lie, the only thing that gets me through some late nights is the fact that I know I can have a nap the next day. 

     For those of us who also have jobs, we get home late, relax a bit, do homework, and push off sleep until the late hours of the night, only to wake up early the next morning. Then the cycle just begins all over again.  Because of this, we tend to crash during daytime hours whenever possible. Our bodies do need rest, so I say, whenever you get the chance, take a nap!

The Violence of Hip-Hop

     Writer Brent Staples, who has a doctorate in psychology from the University of Chicago, writes a very interesting article about how Hip-Hop Music Lost Its Way and Betrayed Its Fans (this also happens to be the title of his article). This article is very interesting to me because I am a fan of hip-hop, and wanted to know more about what he had to say. 
     Starting off, he made some good points, and included a strong back story to back up his writing. He did a good job in writing professionally, however, it was from his standpoint of view. In writing about how hip-hop lost his way, I believe that writing from a psychology view is not the way to go. I take it that he is not a fan of hip-hop by the way he talks about it, and is stand in the matter, so who is he to judge that hip-hop lost its way? 
     Hip-hop is a genre of music, so naturally it has its selected amount of fans. It may have started out in one way and evolved to what it is today, but don't most things in the world "evolve" to be more modern? Music, writing, technology, they all evolve and change to keep up with what the people want and need. 
     I can understand that he wants to talk about how violence is affecting the people in the wrong way, but most of the rappers come from violence. That is what makes rap and hip-hop the genre that it is. I think that he makes some very good points, but then again, you can "hate" on a lot of things based on violence, that doesn't mean that it will lead to bad things, or good things. Our world is more violent today, and the people in it...the very people who rap and sing about it. 
     Brent comes from a good place, but he cannot make a very fair argument with simple facts and stories. Only the fans of the hip-hop genre can truly judge if this type of genre has lost its way. And as for the the betraying its fans part...well, I am still a fan!

Netflix

Ok, so let's talk about Netflix. It's fun, easy to use, and pretty awesome right? Wrong...Netflix used to be awesome. I used Netflix for a while, and found some good use out of it. However, I found more and more that it is just ridiculous. 


When I first started using Netflix, the cost was 7.99+tax with an extra 2.99 for being able to get DVD's sent to your house. The package was pretty sweet. For 9.99 total, I could watch unlimited Instant Streaming, and get one DVD out to my house at a time...for as long as I wanted. I'm not a big movie renter, so I would watch a movie, and then be lazy and not return it until I was interested in getting a different movie. 


This worked out great, until they decided to change their prices. Now, if you want instant streaming, and DVD's, they are two separate packages each 7.99. So now, instead of 9.99 total for both, you would be paying roughly 16 dollars! Now that may be fine for some people, but as a college student, I already pay 16 dollars a month for my DVR from Comcrap, and I really don't watch enough movies to be paying an extra 16 on top of that! 


So I stuck with just he plain ol' instant streaming for a while. The problem is, is that they took a lot of the movies off of their instant streaming, and made your "wide selection" not so wide anymore. Every movie that I looked up to watch on Netflix, whether semi-new or older, is under the DVD rental package, which of course is another 7.99 a month. It's such a rip off! The only thing I used Netflix for was for a TV show, and now I barely have time for that. 


Long story short, I am frustrated with Netflix, and the fact that they think the packages should be separate for one, and then on top of that, they take off a bunch of movies from streaming so you would have to buy the other package if you wanted to see them.