The Real Slim Shady

   Some call him legendary, others call him vulgar, but he is known to everyone worldwide as the famous white rapper Eminem.  Wherever Eminem goes, controversy follows. Whether it's for his explicit lyrics, his daughter Hailie, or his infamous on and off relationship with ex-wife Kim, the media is always on Em's case. But looking at his life in retrospect, who could blame them?

     Eminem's story starts not as Eminem or Slim Shady, but as Marshall Mathers. It begins with a classic young daddy who can't handle the responsibilities of an infant, and therefore decides to leave the family. His father, Marshall Mathers Jr. (whom he was named after) left after only the first 6 months of Marshall’s life. That didn't stop young Eminem from trying to reach his dad. He would often draw pictures and write letters to his father, but they were all returned to him (Esling). Later in some of his raps, daddy got some special shout outs for example: "When you see my dad, tell him I slit his throat in this dream I had." You'd think that Marshall would at least be blessed by a wonderful mother, but according to him that was not the case. On top of constantly making him switch schools, she also put him through a number of other odd things. In lyrics, Eminem claims that his mother was addicted to pain medication, for example "Just try to envision witnessin'  your mama poppin prescription pills in the kitchen" (Esling).  Debbie Mathers-Briggs however denies the accusations in various interviews. She claims such things as “having a beauty degree,” and “being there for Marshall’s half brother Nathan” (Esling). However the media has yet to discover legitimate proof to either side of the story.

     Amidst the tough family relationships in his childhood, young Marshall also had a burning love/hate relationship with Kimberly Scott. The two first met at ages 13 and 15, when mutual friends introduced them. Marshall tried to impress Kim immediately by jumping from couch to couch and lip-syncing to different rap songs (All About Kim). Eventually they started to date, and when Kim and her twin sister Dawn ran away from home, it was Debbie Mathers who took them in. Shortly afterwards they dropped out of high school together, but continued to live with Mathers-Briggs (All About Kim). It was only after they had their daughter, Hailie Jade Scott, that they moved into their own dwelling in a high crime neighborhood. Due to financial stress, the relationship was soon spoiled (All About Kim). This first breakup however didn’t last very long, and they were married on June 14^th 1999. This marriage didn’t last long either and they were divorced later that summer (All About Kim). Eminem’s single “Kim” was inspired by the divorce,  it featured him having a back and forth conversation with Kim, he even provided her voice (and eventually screams) himself. The single eventually drove Kim to attempt suicide and be sent to rehab, leaving Hailie in the custody of Marshall. After she returned from rehab, Eminem popped the question a second time, but this marriage was even shorter than the last. Many songs have been written for her since (All About Kim).

     Although Kim was , and is, a large part of Eminem’s life, music is as well. Music not only got him out of financial trouble, but it is also an outlet for his anger. Or really “Slim Shady’s” anger. Slim Shady is Eminem’s alter ego of sorts whom he blames for his angry and sometimes offensive lyrics. Eminem says that the idea for Slim Shady came to him while he was on the toilet (Who's the Real Slim Shady?). Since inventing the alter ego Slim Shady has appeared in many songs such as “The Real Slim Shady” and even has an entire album to himself “The Slim Shady LP.” (Who's the Real Slim Shady?) Unfortunately there was a bump in Eminem’s career after Slim Shady came to be: drug addiction. Eminem couldn’t fall asleep without sleeping pills, which he began to abuse (Esling). His album “Encore” didn’t live up to his acclaimed previous three albums, and his fan base was extremely disappointed. Little did they know, he was battling drug addiction the entire album (Esling). Now it was his turn to leave the kids, and go to rehab. During which he wrote many songs for his album “Relapse” which also failed to please the public. Interestingly his next album “Recovery” which was written when he was completely clean did better than the last two albums combined (Esling).

Supposedly Eminem is working on his 8^th solo album. Not only that but the 8^th installment of his life. The 8^th installment of songs whose lyrics will be examined under a microscope. But mostly an 8^th installment of controversy.

Permanence

Eminem, Billie Joe Armstrong, Heath Ledger, Michael Jackson. Just a few celebrities and musicians that relied on drugs heavily. Two of them dead because of that reliance. Anthony Kiedis of The Red Hot Chili Peppers is no different. His love for drugs didn't exactly kill him, but it did eat away at the first half of his life. What did he find in drugs that he was willing to sacrifice so much for?

     Anthony was never very close to his mother. He had moved out of her little Michigan house to L.A. before he was ten. The reason for this drastic change in location was his pot smoking, half shirt wearing, long haired hippie of a father. Just like any other little boy his age, Anthony idolized his father no matter what, he didn't care that daddy had left his mother to raise him on her own. In his eyes none of that mattered now as long as they were together. And for a while they were. But that was before his dad's drug dealing became excessive and he was dubbed as "Spider." From that point on the only time Anthony ever received any attention from his beloved father, was when he was following in his footsteps. Doing drugs, partying hard, and even losing his virginity at age 14. That's how the life changing addiction began, as a way to get attention from his father. There was one thing Anthony could always count on though, and that was the white stray cat that lived in his yard. After a hard day at school, or an argument with a friend, Anthony would confide in this cat instead of his parent. It was after the cat disappeared that Anthony began doing drugs for more than just attention.

     Another aspect to think about is that Anthony never knew any better. He never had a mother, or even a healthy parental relationship to lead him in the right direction. The only adult guidance he ever received, taught him that drugs were indeed the answer to everything. It was his own father that taught him all the wrong lessons, and took him to experience those lessons firsthand. Instead of hanging out with friends on weekends like most kids his age, Anthony would be downtown in different clubs partying, getting drunk, and doing drugs. He never knew any better, and this way of life soon became a strong and almost unbreakable habit.

     Strangely enough, Anthony grew up to be in a successful band, "The Red Hot Chili Peppers." It's a miracle he came so far with such unhealthy habits and background. But he soon realized that he couldn't balance both drug addiction and a semi famous band all at once. Drugs not only burned a hole in his wallet, but they also made a negative impact on his health. Eventually he realized that although the drugs gave him an amazing high, he strived for permanence. After a life of instability, he probably wanted to rest easy knowing drugs weren't getting in the way of his income, friendships, and music, things that were permanent unlike highs. After wrestling with the idea a few months, one of his closest friends, and the bands guitarist, Hillel Slovak passed away. From a drug overdose. That was Anthony's turning point. He now realized he not only owed it to himself to become sober, but to Hillel as well.

     It's true when they say that drugs are an addictive substance, obviously they destroy multiple people's lives, because they are so addicted to these substances. Anthony was just as addicted and dependent as the next helpless addict, but he was addicted to other things too, things he craved more than he could ever need drugs. Stability in his life, and the music that made that possible for him.

The Lonely

      Emotion can be a beautiful and terrible thing. Unfortunately, the terrible side seems to prevail. There are so many emotions that can hurt you, grief, confusion, pain, and embarrassment to name a few.  But in my opinion the feeling of loneliness is the absolute worst. Going through grief is easier with a shoulder to cry on, confusion with someone to help point the way, someone to numb your pain, and someone to turn your embarrassing moment into a funny one. But what happens if you're alone? Ask Ty MacFarlane, who's been living alone in the middle of a desert for months. Completely surrounded by nothingness. Not even he, who considers himself a real lover of the land, can stand the loneliness for too long.  That's where Gemma comes in, another victim of the lonely.

     Tyler MacFarlane, or just Ty for short, takes the term "living off the land" to heart. He finds the desert so incredible, that he wants to live there: alone. His typical day consists of walks in the heat, working out with his punching bag, gathering food, and observing the land. All alone. Even at night, when the desert gets scary and the wind begins to howl, he sleeps alone. Not only is Ty alone physically, but mentally as well. Family has never been a big concept in Ty's life. His childhood seems to be one of those typical sob stories that you see everywhere these days, his dad left when he was very young, and his mother became addicted to substances and was therefore deemed incapable of taking care of him. Life at the orphanage quickly became the norm for Ty. A norm where nobody paid him any special attention, or saw him as their own. He now needs to fulfill this empty companionless void that has become his life. And he chooses to do this with Gemma.

     Gemma has always been a loner in a way herself. Within her group of friends, she seems to be the odd one out. While the rest of them would prefer to get wasted in the local park, she'd rather be reading or writing. Not that she'd ever tell them that though. They'd make fun of her! So she remains quietly different from them, a mind that is sharp, among a clan of dull ones. Her family situation isn't much better. Money, success in the office, and respect among peers rank above Gemma on her parents' list of priorities in life, and being an only child she doesn't exactly have a sibling to turn to. The loneliness doesn't truly hit her until she's alone in her room, curled up with her book.  Maybe she could use Ty's help, just not in the way he envisioned it.

     Another couple that is racked by loneliness on both sides, is the "Twilight Saga's" Bella and Edward. Being a vampire, Edward doesn't age and has been alive about 100 years. Somehow in that span of time he has never fallen in love, amidst his entire adopted family, who are all together and enjoy flaunting it. Bella resembles Gemma in a way, because like her she doesn't seem to connect with anyone around her. Bella's mom describes her as "a middle aged child," always thinking and acting responsibly. In the world of high school, it's hard to find another person who thinks that way. When she moves to Forks Washington with her father, the loneliness only gets worse. Her father is not exactly a verbose person, and seems to be pretty hard to reach. Luckily these two found each other, and they're no longer victims of this degrading emotion.

     To say the least, loneliness is hard. Imagine that feeling of having absolutely nobody to turn to. That feeling of taking on your life alone. Ty and Gemma may not have had a perfect Bella and Edward ending to their story…or an even remotely similar beginning or middle. But at least for a time they had each other. 

Sacrifice

      Love is different for everyone. It can be the most wonderfully perfect little rainbow filled occurrence of your life, or it can be your biggest mistake to date. Although I believe that one thing about love everyone can agree on is that it's a bit emotionally draining, and has the power to do crazy things. Crazy things such as suicide, sacrifices of all kinds, and even in this case kidnap.

    Ty had a strange childhood, heck he's had a strange life in general, considering he's been stalking the same girl since she was five. After obsessing over innocent teenage girl Gemma , he drugs her coffee and takes her to live with him in the middle of an unknown desert. Forever. He's obviously mentally ill. How can you keep track of the same girl throughout her entire life? Take away her privacy like that? Does love have the power to make that big of an impact? Apparently so. I can't think of a better explanation for Ty's actions, than his love for Gemma. Sure it may be obsessive and unhealthy. But hey love is love, and Ty is drowning in it.

    There's an age old saying that goes something like "If you love something, set it free." This is exactly what I'm thinking Ty will act on. If Edward Cullen can do it in "New Moon" than so can Ty. Edward's love for Bella is just as unhealthy as Ty's love for Gemma. He watches her sleep, is horribly over protective and condescending, and I swear he goes through withdrawals. Both men are dealing with the same feelings, and the same issue. Without their presence, their loves lives would be ten times better off.  Edward realizes that, decides to face his future withdrawals, and parts ways with Bella because he wants her to have a better life. I think that Ty will somehow realize that so much is waiting for Gemma outside their little desert home, and set her free as well.

    If love is such a powerful feeling that it can cause death, emotional distress, and kidnapping; then I also believe it can drive someone to give up their life's devotion. Gemma is the project Ty has been working on his entire life, because he adores her. Maybe he adores her enough to let her go.

ALEKS?

  Pewaukee School District has a pretty unique take on learning. Why do I think that you may ask? Well everything middle and high school students do is on the computer. We are each given out own laptop to write essays on, learn Spanish on, and even communicate with teachers on. But the most relevant reason for our laptops, is ALEKS, the math learning program that is entirely online, leaving students to learn every topic on their own without a teacher teaching it to them. With ALEKS no teacher is necessary, the only things you really need are a computer, and the ability to read the explanations that are given for each topic. That is the entire point of ALEKS, to learn math independently, and (supposedly) more efficiently.  Therefore shouldn't it stay that way?

    Every Monday, the math pupils of Asa Clark are forced to participate in Focus Monday. Their purpose is to get us to "focus" hence the cleverly thought out name. But in my eyes, and in the eyes of several of my classmates for that matter, it should be renamed "A day to waste on a pointless activity, so that you feel as if we're actually teaching you." You see, us math students can use all of the time on ALEKS that we can get. When you're expected to teach yourself an entire course worth of math within a single school year, you don't really want to have silly interruptions like that. Mondays usually go something like  this: Start by finding a good spot by your friends, next talk the entire class period, finally copy down what the teacher has written on the board and turn your paper in! Easy and pointless all in one! There are many other interruptions as well such as emails home to our parents and ILP learning plans that we have to type out and keep track of, and instruction, where a teacher teaches you a topic in a completely different way, in twice the time it would take you to learn it yourself. As an ALEKS user, I simply want to make the most of my math time, but the teachers don't seem to agree with me.

     A typical day in math class starts with something called a daily warm-up, and it is eerily similar to Focus Monday. It has the same format: Come in, sit by your friends, pull out a piece of paper and copy what it says on the board. The worst part about these daily warm-ups, is the fact that they somehow take up 20-30 minutes of time. Don't we already waste an entire day on this same thing? How focused do we really need our minds to be? If anyone actually pays attention to the content of daily warm-ups, they would find questions such as "How many sides on a (insert name of polygon)?" Another big one is numbers that appear the same written backwards, or sometimes even upside down! Why are we wasting valuable ALEKS time on such things?

     Overall if it were up to me, our math curriculum would be more focused on actually using the learning program that we have invested in. There is no point in the ALEKS program if we can hardly work on it, and instead must work on a bunch of other activities.  The program is all about independent learning, not "focusing" and "collaboration." So what is the point of forcing such things on us?

Mistakes

   (Authors Note: This is my character analysis essay. I am doing it on Richard Parker from Life of Pi)

      If you're human, you've made a mistake in your life. It's simply a factual statement when someone says that nobody is perfect, because in reality that is the truest statement one can make. People mess up on a daily basis, on both small and large matters. For example you may have gotten a question wrong on an important test, or made a mistake during basketball tryouts, resulting in your placement on the second team.  In truth you'll probably be over it in a few weeks. Pi Patel's mistakes on the other hand can not be taken so lightly, in fact they alter his entire life forever.

    When poor Pi ends up on a lifeboat in the middle of the Pacific, he has but one companion and that is a 450 pound Bengal Tiger that goes by the name of Richard Parker. Unfortunately for Pi, Richard is a not just a 450 pound big cat, but a 450 pound man eating beast as well. Richard Parker's need for raw meat is sickening, yet it also proves to be helpful in the most unexpected of ways. Providing food for Richard Parker gives Pi something to work at, and eventually Pi becomes so wrapped up in feeding the two of them, that he almost forgets his situation and is able to form a strange attachment to his tiger friend. Think about it, if you provided for another living being for that long, wouldn't you become attached to it as well? The tiger becomes a way out for Pi, something to focus on other than the loss of his family and their future together in Canada. If it wasn't for Richard Parker, Pi just might not have made it off of that boat alive.

     Towards the end of the novel we find out something that not only changes the entire course of the story, but Richard Parker as a character. When Pi is being questioned about his experience he tells two stories, one with animals as the characters, and one with people to replace the animals. These stories are eerily similar, because in both of them the animals and people match up to one another. The even creepier part is that Pi is the person that replaces Richard Parker, who kills multiple people and things throughout the course of the story. Does that necessarily mean that the entire story Pi has been telling is a work of fiction, and that in reality he is a murderer? Not exactly. But Pi is Hindu, who sees most animals as sacred, and is a devoted vegetarian. But that is exactly why Richard Parker isn't real. Pi could not face the vital mistakes he made against his morals and religion, so he decided to cover it up with an intricate lie.

    As an animal, Richard Parker was a creature who hungered for fresh meat. It was like an addiction, and it turned him wild. Alone on a lifeboat Pi figuratively became that tiger. His only companion was his need to kill and devour, at one point in the book after killing a turtle and ripping it's shell off he begins  to see the still alive turtle as a gourmet soup. This lust for murder kept him occupied as well. He quotes "feeding Richard Parker helped me to almost forget my situation." The entire time he is on the lifeboat, Pi's main focus was feeding his carnivorous side. Strangely enough though, as soon as he acquires land Pi loses all traces of the tiger, in fact he doesn't even think twice about it. As a character, Richard Parker was nothing more than a mere figment of Pi's imagination. A figment that Pi wanted to rid himself off immediately. 

     Unlike most mistakes, murder is one that cannot be undone. One that cannot be forgotten or forgiven. Especially in Pi's case, where it ways so heavily against his religion. This murder was in fact so gruesome, that not even the interviewers (who had several doubts about Pi's first story) could swallow it. They chose to believe the unrealistic animal story, over the legitimate one. Humans may not be the most flawless beings, one thing they can do though is suppress their mistakes.

The Alarm

  The sound of her alarm is possibly the most degrading thing she has ever heard. It means another never ending day at school. It means finding an outfit in the morning to accommodate her current situation. It means an entire day of looking over her shoulder, refusing to go anywhere by herself, for fear of running into Him. She has come to hate the sound of her alarm. He doesn't stop at raising angry welts on her face and arms, for His complete satisfaction He must also manipulate her, play games with her that she has no way of winning. Games only He can win. Because of Him she is living one of the most unhealthy lives possible. Domestic abuse is often overlooked by other, more "important" issues, when really it is one of the most severe problems that has arisen in today's society.

     Domestic abuse usually occurs when one member of the relationship decides they need to have the upper hand on the other member. In her case, it is simply because He cannot stand the feeling of weakness. Like most boys, He often would compete with his friends to see who could bench the most, who could be the best on the football team, etc. And when this girl that he knew he loved popped into his already chaotic personal life, He could not let her take over. So he resorted to violence. Of course there are many other reasons this occurs as well, people could be overly possessive and not allow their partners to have friends that are of the opposite gender, they could be using their significant other for physical  favors and see them as nothing except that, or they could even believe that men and women are unequal. In reality more people than you realize are being violently abused, and the signs are everywhere. For example victims will become very conscious of their body at all times, the way they walk to and sit at their desk seems almost planned and mechanical. Also they seem to know every injury on their body and the elaborate cover up behind it. Less obvious signs is that they will flinch at almost anything that comes their way, even something as small as somebody flipping their hair over their shoulder. But the most painful part of domestic violence? The fact that the person that is hurting you, is the person that said they never would.

     Unfortunately abuse in relationships does not stop there. In some cases, like the case of our friend , there is physiological abuse involved as well. This type of abuse is very different from violence, but the effects are just as bad. For example, she has a very low self esteem, and her self confidence is basically nonexistent. It is even hard for her to answer a question in class. This may be have something to do with the fact that He is constantly reminding her that she has no redeeming qualities, or maybe it's because He makes it a point to greet every girl in the hallway but her. Those are not the only things that occur during this type of abuse though.  In severe cases the victim may have to follow a set of rules that the abuser has enforced, such as who they can and can't talk to, what they can and can't wear, and what  they choose to do with their time.  Oftentimes people overlook this aspect of the abuse, but overall this also plays a big part in the outcome.

     For her, the scariest part of the entire relationship is the changes. When she looks at Him she still sees the little boy who has liked her since 5th grade. She still hears Him calling her his angel, and she still feels his arms around her when he would dry her tears instead of create them. And because of this she can't let go. She doesn't know if he even cares about her at all anymore, all she knows is that she needs to move on from the past. But she is too afraid to.