Quick awkward story, so I was suppose to interview someone else, and out of the blue she just ended our friendship. And when I say out of the blue, I literally woke up Tuesday morning to a text saying blah blah blah “goodbye” I replied with a simply rude “K.” I thought hard about whether I should just do the story on her and just get pasted my emotions, stop thinking about it for a little bit just enough to get the damn profile done then I thought this will just turn into something thrown together and I didn’t like that so being a great journalist I am * wink wink * I last minute interviewed someone else. So don’t get confused from my sketch and think, “these don’t match, what’s going on.”

From the 1990s song by Will Smith we are going to “Switch” up my profile!

Emily was only 12 years old when she had to save her grandfathers life; he had been attacked by bees’ “literally about 50 stings”. Her grandfather was outside mowing and without realizing ran over a bees nest in the ground while moving. Emily and her grandma were inside, Emily was on the phone with her best friend Kayla. The phone beeped and she switched over calls, it was her grandfather. “I easily could have ignored the call. But I’m glad I didn’t.” Emily said, she continued saying “ It was on the home phone so I had no way of knowing who was calling.” Which just shows how lucky she was to actually answer the beep in her ear.

“All I heard was a faint distressed whisper of “Help…Emily…get grandma…” she said thinking back to this scary incident in her life.

Emily beeped back over to Kayla and said “hey I think something is wrong, I’ll call you later. Then hung up.” Kayla said.

“She sounded kind of confused and scared at the same time” Kayla said, referring to when Emily beeped back into her phone call.

Emily screamed for her grandma and they went running outside. Her grandma was a nurse so she made him sit up and tried to stabilize him until the ambulance came “which was really fast” Emily said.

Although Emily doesn’t remember what exact physical conditions her grandpa was in all she could remember is “he was in bad shape.”

While her grandpa was in the hospital the EMT’s told them that “if Emily was even a minute later, he may have lost his life.” said her grandma.

Emily did call Kayla back a few hours later and “She was still freaked out and I’m pretty sure she got emotional when she started explaining it” Kayla said.

During the interview Emily kept saying how “traumatic” and “scared” she was, all she could do was bawl her eyes out when she saw her grandpa and during the whole ordeal.

“My grandpa is so allergic to bees’ that he even temporarily lose eye sight”

Her grandpa is alive and healthy today because of her and even though this happened 6 years ago, Emily still remembers this traumatic event as if it happened yesterday. Some may think this isn’t that big of a deal event in ones life compared to some events in other peoples lives, but to Emily it was pretty scary and she handled it like a champ. And in the process saved a life.

A drama filled, thrill-riding, crime filled movie Inside Man is directed by Spike Lee in 2006 and written by Russell Gewirtz. The only two actors in the movie that I recognized are Denzel Washington and Jodie Foster. It’s a backwards-filmed plot twisting two hour and nine minute movie. You know the outcome of the movie in the very first scene. The fact Russell was able to pull off a movie like this amazes me, how it just starts off with the outcome yet still keeps the viewers around to watch the movie beginning to end. But the directing and writing is so good, that you stick with it to see how they come to the final outcome it came to. Some parts are really confusing to me but the majority of the movie made sense. The basic outline of Inside Man is a robbery that isn’t a robbery but later is a robbery, confusing I know, but that’s what keeps you on the edge of your seat. There are so many different characters in the movie, so many different personalities that the writers came up with it really makes you think someone is really going to be killed just because they can’t keep their mouth shut. From the “big chested girl”, to the kid to thinks he’s a hard*ss and nothing scares him, to the guy who is scared sh*tless, and then they just had to throw in the American but Iraqi Arab looking male who got treated horribly by the police just because they thought he was a terrorist, yet all he cared about was his turban when the police took it away from him.

On IMDB the movie got a 7.7 out of 10 star rating. I’d give it about an 8 out of 10. There are a handful of camera angels and camera movements that are just about enough to send me to the bathroom throwing up. I’m not a fan of movies where the camera is right in the middle of the action. I like to be able to see what is going on from a step back distance. The acting was good, the plot was ingenious and the ending was just jaw dropping. Seeing a robbery done so brilliantly it makes you wonder why someone hasn’t attempted this in real life. It is just a movie yes, but maybe the myth busters should test it out and see how possible it actually is, because if it were actually possible it would only make this movie that much better. The way the writers thought of the way to use the hostages the way they did and the way the robbers robbed the bank without it looking like they took a single penny was so clever.

This movie is for the people who enjoy criminal movies, dramas, thrillers, and plot twists. It is rated R for language and some violent scenes. Which I would agree with, so young high schoolers and grade schoolers probably shouldn’t watch this movie. But anyone who is a Denzel Washington fan would enjoy this movie, and plus it is a “younger” Denzel, which makes it interesting to watch and see how far he has come in his career. And who doesn’t want to watch a Denzel Washington thriller anyways?!

I will be interviewing a friend of mine who was in a gnarly car accident, that know one understands how she survived. I haven’t interviewed her yet so when I do, that will be the first time I hear the whole story. She doesn’t exactly like talking about it and doesn’t want me to know because it’s such a scary accident but has agreed to talk about it with me for me. I have never seen pictures and the little details she has shared are very minimal. She doesn’t remember much about it other then what she’s been told by other people. I will try to get a picture from her but I’m not for sure she will let me share them for the assignment.

The questions I’ll be asking are:

How old were you/ how long ago did this take place?

What all happened?

How has this accident affected you today?

What was going through your head right before, during and after it happened?

How long were you in the hospital?

Would you take it back if you could?

What is one thing you’ve learned or take from this experience?

What was the hardest part during all this?

What is one positive out of such a negative experience?

I asked more questions then what’s listen because I was inserting questions as she was answering my questions.

I had a very hard time coming up with the questions because it’s such a hard topic for her to talk about. It just brings back way to many memories that aren’t positive. The only positive that came from this is she survived.

Corpse Book Cover

For my book review I chose to read is Corpse by Jessica Snyder Sachs. Now I thought I would like this book, all the reviews I read about Corpse says it’s about some detectives that come across a murder case and have to figure the time of death and how this person died by science and tactics used on the body. But I will start off by saying that’s not what I read at all, and this book isn’t for everyone, for me it was very boring and confusing I could not for the life of me get into this book. It was all over the place, I could not tell when the subject was changing which just made me constantly lost in the book.

As quoted from the back of the book “it is a must read not only for forensic investigators but also for those learning how science can solve the problems of the past.” Which I do agree with, but I’m neither of those, so maybe that’s why it was such a hard read for me. I felt this book was very repetitive. Talking about different stages in the decaying process of a body. The first 60 pages of the book are very dry and boring, actually in my opinion if they aren’t talking about a murder case and talking about the decaying process it is very boring, but when they were talking about a murder case the book had my full attention.

Jessica Snyder Sachs is a editor for magazines like Health, Parenting, Popular Science, and Discover, she has been a freelance writer since 1991. Most of her writing is science related, Corpse was her very first book she wrote, another book of hers is Good Germs, Bad Germs, which is about bacterial ecosystems that bathe inside a healthy human body. Jessica graduate from Columbia Journalism School with a mid-career master with cross-disciplinary graduate studies in immunology, microbiology and infectious disease.

Author of Corpse

Some of her awards include the Fund for Investigative Journalism’s 2006 book award, fellowships from the Alicia Patterson Foundation and the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing and a research grant from the Sloan Foundation. And in 2006, her Discover feature on the effects of antibiotics on the body’s good bacteria was selected for inclusion in the anthology Best American Science and Nature Writing. Another of her Discover features “DNA Pollution May be Spawning Killer Microbes” was included in Best American Medical Writing 2009.

Not only does she has a educational background in some of the science that is used in finding out a murder time line and how the person died, she also went and found people to interview about different cases throughout history, she went to Smithsonian Institution which is the top of the top forensics science department in Washington D.C. She did lots of research, and reporting. Some of the stories she tells are hard to believe but I think they way she is telling they she was told about the stories in great detail in an interview, because she was able to set the scene as if she was actually there but I don’t think she actually was there, I think she just got that good of detail from the people she interviewed, that she was able to make it seem like she was there watching and taking note of what the forensic anthropologies was doing.

I can’t really tell if the author is emotionally attached to the stories she tells or if she’s just telling them and doing her job. She has her stories set up so that she can go straight into the science part of the book without warning, and it switches back and forth to her giving information about forensic science and the actual forensic anthropologist that’s at the crime scene giving the facts about what they see and figure out about the body.

I’d give this book a 2 out of 5 stars, amazon gave it 4.5 starts out of 5. My reason for my grade is because I’m not in forensics science. I love CSI shows, and before going down the path of a Mass Communication major, criminal justice was at the top of my list for possible majors. I’ve always wanted to be a cop/CSI investigator, so yes it is all very interesting to me but because I’ve never had a anatomy or a science class that teaches you about the body about death everything science related in this book just went completely over my head. She did “dumb” down the lingo. For example, one of my all time favorite shows in Bones on Fox, it is all about a group of forensic anthropologists who work at the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. solving crazy murder cases after the body has gone through a lot of decomposing stages, just like what is in Jessica’s book. The TV show has the very intense scientific lingo like in the book, but the directors of the show some how work out the script so that the average person still understands what is being talked about and what they are saying. The show, for a lack of better words, “dumbs down” the scientific side of a crime but still uses all the scientific terms, if that makes any sense. Reading Corpse made me feel stupid because I did not understand anything the author was talking about. I do not want to read a book and feel stupid as I’m reading it. That just makes me put the book down.

It was also very repetitive, she went on and on and on about the stages your body goes through in the first handful of hours once you pass away. I get it, your body tenses up at about four hours, and then relaxes after a while, move on. The temp of your body takes a certain amount of time after death to start getting cooler and cooler, and if you do the right math just by the temp of the body that it was found at you can find the exact time of hour minute and probably seconds the person died at. She spent about 60 pages too many explaining just that.

Believing in ghosts is a very person-to-person thing. I personally believe in ghosts, along with my roommates. The five of us think our house is haunted. We hear things, see things, and experience things, to the point where we have no doubt about it that our house is haunted. Some people may think that the people who do believe in ghosts are just crazy or over think things, and when you’re telling those people stories they just look at you as if you are the most stupid person ever.

This experience that I’m about to share has happened twice to two different roommates. And before Josh came and told all of us the story no one had ever really mentioned anything about the house being haunted, so everyone was giving him the “you’re crazy” look. I sat there believing every word he said not only because I believe in ghosts but because I’ve lived in this house completely alone for 12 weeks straight, I’ve heard some pretty unexplainable things, thankfully I’ve never seen anything.

***

All the roommates were just hanging out in the living room doing homework, watching TV and just relaxing. Josh out of no one asked if anyone believes this house is haunted. No one gave a definite yes or no, we all just looked around at one another (probably because no one wanted to look stupid). So he continued on saying that “a couple nights ago I was texting Erin (his girlfriend) before going to bed, I noticed my phone had 8% battery left and it was late so I figured I’d just said goodnight and throw my phone on the charger and go to bed, nothing out of the normal, I do it every night. And I know for a fact my phone was charging because I got another text after saying goodnight to Erin and I saw in the corner it was at about 20% battery and still charging. I randomly woke up in the middle of the night and went to reach for my phone to check the time, I reached over for my phone and it wasn’t there, I kept feeling around and couldn’t find it, I felt around in my bed still couldn’t find my phone. At this point I was getting annoyed so I got out of bed turned on my lights and looked around, I found my charger on the floor in the middle of my room with no phone attached to it. I looked everywhere, I couldn’t find my phone, I stood there thinking about where it could be. I know for a fact I put it on the charger and it was charging before I went to bed.” Everyone chuckled because as he was telling the story you could hear annoyance in his voice. He continued “seriously guys just listen, so I’m like pissed at this point and was ripping my room apart for my phone! For some weird reason I got the thought to look between my wall and bed, I lifted up my top mattress and found my phone. It was like 4:35 in the morning, which pissed me off even more, and my phone was at about 87% battery. I was so pissed I just put my charger back in the wall and put my phone back on the charger and went to sleep.”

Ashley “Josh you’re crazy, you sure this wasn’t a dream?”

Josh “I’m positive because I woke up remembering it and still being weirded out about it. I swear the basement is haunted!”

Me “I mean I believe you, I don’t like the basement, I don’t feel like I should be down there, I only go down there if I absolutely have to, when I do my laundry I do it as quickly as I can.”

Everyone just went on with the evening, the conversation ended and that was that. But a couple weeks later Steven the other guy whose room is in the basement brought it back up. The exact same thing happened to him! He found his phone between his mattress and the floor (his mattress at the time was just on the floor) charger was on the opposite side of the room and phone was under his mattress. That’s when everyone got weirded out; no one really said anything but you could tell everyone was thinking about it.

People believe different things, some believe in ghosts and some don’t. Whether the guys are telling the truth or not I believe my house is haunted. And I will stand by it forever.  I don’t care how many weird looks I get I’m not ashamed to believe in ghosts and say I believe in ghosts.

It’s Friday night; I’m home alone all my roommates went home for the weekend or to the Iowa game. Laying in bed before the clock even hits ten o’clock, not a drop of alcohol in me, and ten different homework assignments due by Monday. I’m no normal college student who goes out as you can probably tell.

Listening to what’s going on around me, all I hear is my TV on in the background playing the Royals vs. Orioles baseball game, my typing and an occasional *DING* from my phone indicating I have a text message. Not really focused on the TV and what’s going on, I noticed the crowd got loud, a big play must have happened. Sometimes a loud car drives by. Sometimes it’s a car with an extremely loud muffler and sometimes it’s a car playing their music extremely loud, most of the time though it’s a cars muffle because they are driving up the hill in front or even to the side of my house. A train just sounded its horn, which for me to hear from my house isn’t uncommon.

Outside of the TV, my typing, cars outside and random trains way off in he distance it’s dead silent. Almost too silent for my liking, I hear nothing yet this nothing has a sound a ringing sound. It’s hard to explain; I don’t know whether the silence is my head or if I’m hearing air but it’s a constant ring of silence.

Profile Article

The article itself isn’t really about him, but at the same time it is…if that makes any sense. He’s a new up and coming actor who is staring in the new movie “St. Vincent”. The article is basically just saying to watch out for him as he is going to go far in the movie life, acting and directing (when he grows up). There wasn’t much of an article about him it was just an interview that he had with USA Today and the video of the interview was right above it so I only skimmed the article.

When I got done with the article I instantly thought “wow, this kid is adorable”. He was struggling with the questions during the interview, he couldn’t figure out the right words to say but he eventually got it! He’s just in general a cute kid. Very nice and trying his best for his age.

The picture for the profile is from a scene in the movie and he just so happens to be looking down and to the side, but he shows personality. The video is all on him so you can get a good look at his face. Here’s a screen shot from the video:

The big move as been accomplished! For the last five months, KMSC was moved to the third floor of Lewis Hall due to the construction on the back of the Library Building and the construction going on around the building, but we are finally back in our old home! We were stuck and crammed in this no bigger then 8 feet wide by 30 feet deep closet, with no windows, no air, and machines that ran 24/7 and heated up the room an extra 20 degrees, not to mention the flights of stairs that had to be climbed just to get to this closet. I had to work in this closet five days a week for four months, spending anywhere from two to three hours in this room.

I’m apart of KMSC for my major, so as a mass communication major I have to have a certain amount of hours on air, this summer I worked for KMSC so I was paid to be on air for a certain amount of time in a week, this summer I was on air six days a week, two hours every day, now I’m only on four days a week, for a total of six hours. At first I wasn’t about to be on air, I was so scared and nervous; I was going to do anything in my power to stay away from being in front of a camera or behind a mic. I even had meetings with Doc and he eventually helped me through it.

Now we are back in the original studio, where it gets hot yes, but because the room is bigger, and we can keep the door open since there aren’t students just hanging out talking loud in the hall waiting for their next class to start. There’s also a window, which although the window just looks into the production room it still makes the room feel a little less lonely, and bigger.

My first shift back in the old studio on air wasn’t the smoothest, can’t expect much when everything has been moved from one building to another, unplugged and plugged back in. We also have our old soundboard back so we are still setting those setting back to normal. When I walked into the studio I instantly was nervous that after five months of using a completely different soundboard that was four times less complex then the soundboard in the normal studio, I forgot how to use this soundboard, and I went on air in four minutes! I didn’t know what to do, I couldn’t go bug Doc about for a couple reason. One I didn’t have time. Two, I didn’t want him to be like “really Caitlin come on, just look at it and figure it out. It wasn’t that long ago”. So instead I just sat down, found the right mouse (there’s two computers with two different mouse, so I had to make sure I had the right one for computer one). I took a deep breath and just started to think. What I needed to know right away came back, but some things like recording a voice track didn’t come back and I figured I’d just worry about that when I need to make a voice track.

By time I remembered what I needed to remember I had about two minutes left before I needed to go on air. So I put the headphones on, grabbed the right mouse and opened Virtual DJ picked Welcome to Paradise by Green Day and dragged that into slot one, then I dragged Ain’t It Fun by Paramore and dragged that into slot two. I was good to go, now all I had to do is watch Zara, which is the program we run when someone isn’t actually live in the studio on air. And watch the time tick away on the song that was currently playing. With about ten seconds left I turned the mic on on the soundboard and raised the fader of my mic, quickly thinking about what I was going to say, before I knew it the song was over and I just started talking.

“You’re listening to Fusion 93 KMSC, I’m DJ Shy I’ll be in the booth for the next two hours, to start off my show here’s Welcome to Paradise by Green Day.”

I hit play on Virtual DJ, faded my mic down and clicked it off. The song was playing yet I was freaking out. I sounded horrible! It sounded like I was getting reverb and I was talking in a very hallow and echoy room along with my voice being deeper and more raspy. But I didn’t know if it was my headphones or me! I walked around the corner and down the hall to Joan’s office and asked if they could hear me.

“I wasn’t paying enough attention to be able to hear it, I’m sorry hun. I bet you sound amazing though!” Joan said after I asked her, I said “I don’t think so, I thought it sounded off when I was talking on mic.” She doesn’t know enough to help me out but Doc was in his office and he came and looked at it. He worked his very confusing to me radio magic and figured out it wasn’t me. It is just a bad connection in the headphones and had to just ignore it. I played the next song. Still getting major feed back I changed the headphones. Continued playing music and talking after every three to four songs, yet it still sounded bad! Of course right when Doc left it went back to sounding bad, so I just gave up and left it. I knew I was the only one hearing the weird noise so I just stopped worrying about it.

After a while I realized it was a deep hum that the audience could hear if I either a song was too quiet to start or finish or if I was talking too quietly and the hum would over power my voice, so I just turned my mic up when I talked and made sure that I never had a real quiet moment. Moving forward with my show I wasn’t worrying about the sound problems and what not I just sat back, played Hay Day and texted. I paid just enough attention to know when to talk, and know when to play the next song. I had to keep log of all the songs I played and I had to at some point do a PSA, and weather and I had to watch the clock so that at every top of the hour I made sure I said the legal ID.

For example at 12:00 I said, “That was Ash Tree Lane by MRMS, and you’re listening to KMSC Sioux City the Student Radio Voice of Morningside College. Coming up next is Forever by Papa Roach.”

Going into my first shift back on air in the original studio I knew there could be problems but I wasn’t complaining the problems I had where simple problems that didn’t effect me and my show so I was able to just let it go. It’s a college radio station the listeners can’t expect us to be perfect every hour of the day. We are learning every day. We aren’t pros…just yet.