Boston Bruin's Season Review

            After a great start the Bruins are currently involved in a skid, dropping four out the last five.  The Bruins are 12-8-2 right now and are in second place in their division.  They are five points behind arch rival Montreal.  In the eastern conference standings, the B’s sit in the eighth spot.  It is still very early in the season; however one cannot help but be frustrated with their inability to score as of late.  The team has only mustered five goals in their last four games.  Last season the Bruins were picked to win the Stanley cup, however they struggled finding the back of the net all year. This is something Boston hopefuls will not want to go through again this year.

            The upside so far is their intensity.  The Bruins have come out this season and set a physical presence early and often.  Some would argue that they are setting precedence because of what happened to their leading scorer last year Mark Savard, who has been inactive since late last year due to a vicious dirty hit by Pittsburgh’s Matt Cooke.  Others would argue that Cam Kneely is rubbing off on the squad and that’s what’s making them play so tough.  Either way, this writer loves it.  It is such an important aspect in the game of hockey to establish your team as a tough team.  A team, that when others have to play you, they know they are in for a rough game, and the bruins have done just that.  Led by tough guy Shawn Thornton and Mark Stuart, the Bruins are tied for sixth in the NHL with twenty one major penalties called against.  In a recent move, the bruins traded defenseman Matt Hunwick for Colby Cohen, a big defenseman who played his college days at Boston University.  Cohen is very much unproven, but has a big upside, and could potentially work his way into the Bruins lineup.

          One of the biggest surprises of the year for the Bruins is their goalie situation.  After Tim Thomas won the Vezna trophy in 2008/2009, he had a flop year last year and ended up losing his job to rookie goalie Tukkah Rask.  Rask was stellar last year putting up great numbers and being a rock in net down the stretch.  Rask came in this year as the starter, but after a rough first game against Phoenix, Tim Thomas took over and hasn’t slowed down.  Thomas is 11-2 with a 1.5 gaa and a 95 save %.  These numbers are mind blowing.  And although Rask sits at 1-6, his numbers are quite good as well.  Being a former goalie, this writer sees the Bruin’s goalie situation as a healthy competition that will allow for huge successes in the long run.  The Bruins are built from the net out, and have the ability to do big things the rest of the year.           

TMI Response

Is the internet color blind? I don’t think so.  I think that hoping fo,r or wanting a “colorblind” society is both unrealistic and unproductive.  In America, people come from all over the world.   We are ultimately a country of immigrants.  Because of this, there will always be stereotypes, and the only thing that can work to diminish stereotypes, is awareness of these stereotypes.   The emergence of social networking is serving as a productive medium that connects people from all over the world.  With the combination of the internet and other media outlets, people now more than ever, can connect with other people from different ethnic backgrounds and see them as equal beings regardless of their appearance.  People are also finding themselves interacting with many different types of people via the internet that they typically would not.  Courtney Marshal said that we should,” use the Internet stra­tegically, as a means for enhancing and strengthening community, rather than transcending identity.” The internet has and will continue to help bring communities and cultures together.  All it takes is one good experience with someone who you have had a previous stereotype about for that stereotype to go away, and social media and the internet allows a much better chance for that to happen.

Stephen King's - On Writing

              Stephen King’s On Writing, is an extremely insightful book on how to write.  It is written in a casual tone which allows the person reading to really engage in his words.  I especially like how he breaks down the process of writing using his tool chest metaphor.

King explains the ins and outs of writing.  He offers his opinion often, and does it in a humorous and sometimes “in your face” way.  Being such decorated author, I was thrown off by his casual tone.  He tells the story the way he sees it, and I admire him for that.  I wish more educational texts were written in this tone.  I think that students of all ages would react more positively to a book like this, than to the standard textbook written “from up above” the rest of us.

Oddly enough, this was my first Stephan King book.  I think I might be the only college student in the world who can say that.  I am interested in reading more by King, but with so many options out there, I don’t know where to begin.  Can anyone offer some advice on what to read next?

Tony and White

Jon Quick a.k.a. "Quicky"

Micro-Fiction

I decided to use the  "first and last sentance" format from this NPR site http://n.pr/cE1d63

Some people swore that the house was haunted. However, Chazz Darby, a typical high school football player, was not one of these people.  One Saturday evening in early October, Chazz and a two of his teammates were high off their big win against arch rival Pinkerton Academy.  They wanted to celebrate their big win, but didn’t have anywhere to hold the celebration.  While the three boys were brainstorming possible locations, Chazz recommended the abandoned house on Blossom road.  The two friends, shocked at such an outrageous idea stared at Chazz and that the same time blurted out, “are you fucking serious?”  Chazz stood up and sarcastically said, “come on guys, you don’t buy that haunted BS do you?” The two boys, stared at each other, and then one of them said, “I ain’t saying I believe in ghosts or nothin’, but that house is just creepy.”  Chazz replied, “That’s good enough for me, we just found our location to party!  Get on the horn, rally the troops and let’s get after it tonight.”  The two friends were not enthused by the plan, but as they often did, they followed Chazz’s lead, pulled out their phones, and started to plan the party.  The three high school jocks decided to meet outside the house on Blossom rd at eight thirty. 

 As planned, all three friends met, as scheduled, at eight thirty.  Chazz, who was often the ring leader amongst this group, took it upon himself to break a window on the first floor of the abandoned house.  The three boys climbed through the broken window and began to walk around the house.  The house seemed unusually in good condition, especially for a house that was vacant for five years.  Chazz commented on the house “wow place is in good shape.” The two boys were really sketched out by the good condition of the house.  One of them said, “Let’s get out of here, I am not comfortable.”  As they were just about to about to be done circling the bottom floor, one of the boys grabbed Chazz by the back of his letterman jacket and spun him around so he was facing the once broken window that they had all climbed through less than five minutes ago.  All three boys jaw’s hit the floor as the window was no longer broken, and there was no broken glass anywhere to be found.  They all looked at each other in disarray.   Immediately, all three of them raced towards the front door, the door was locked, and wasn’t budging.  The cliché horror movie that Chazz did not believe in was coming true right before his eyes.  The boys whispered amongst each other, “Is this really happening?”  Soon after, the lights flickered off, and the boys reached for their phones as a light source, the phones were gone; the three boys were not ready for what was about to happen to them.  Nothing was ever the same after that…

TMI

TMI , aka "too much information" is showing up a lot throughout various social networks. I am a facebook user and see it every day. It has gotten to the point where I literally have to block people so that their status updates do not appear on my live feed every minute of every day. TMI can occur in many ways, however, I seem to see it in two specific ways. Some people are "guilty" of TMI with the number of status updates they post in a day and some people are guilty because of the content in which they post. I find it somewhat entertaining at times, but most of the time its flat out annoying. It's hard to understand how someone can update their status on facebook more times in one day then I have in my whole facebook career. It is also very annoying when someone shares "too much information" on a content level via a status update. Why would you publicly post a private matter on facebook so that your whole social network can see? Clearly you are desperate for attention. All in all TMI is becoming a problem amongst most social networks. In my opinion it stems for the media, which pushes that sort of thing. Hopefully people start to become more aware of TMI, especially some of my "facebook friends" so that my feed gets less polluted. I found a good read on this topic here.

first official blog

I am a blogger....and im pretty proud of that