The waiting game
Imagine this: A girl eagerly waits, sitting by her telephone, two hours, 15 minutes and 37 seconds after first calling and being told “Hey, can I call you back in five minutes?” She ponders on why the person is taking so long to call back.
Did something really important pop up right as soon as the person was going to dial the number? Was it something I said? Was it something I didn’t say? Maybe they just forgot me? she wonders.
I mean it is entirely possible, the girl thinks to herself, I am pretty forgettable.
It wasn’t like she hadn’t called the person back after 15 minutes of waiting.
She did.
Then she called back 15 minutes after that, 10 minutes after that and then seven minutes after that. She then began calling in seven minute intervals.
“Hi, you have reached …” CLICK!
Don’t want to appear too desperate…
Seven minutes later: “Hi, it’s me, again. I just wanted to see if you were in and if you got my messages. I really need to talk to you. Please, call my back.”
The eight messages were some variation of that.
Still, after numerous phone messages, no answer and no call-back.
Get the hint, girl, they don’t want to call you back!
The girl shakes her head and takes these no responses as a challenge.
What is wrong with you?! Are you desperate?! you must be wondering to yourself about this girl.
Why yes, yes, she is.
All journalists are desperate whenever a source does not call back after promising to do so. While this may be an extreme, many really wish they could just constantly hit the redial over and over and over again.
Like a grade-school girl eagerly waits for a boy she likes to call her on the phone (or, I guess, text her), journalists jump out of their skin whenever their phone rings and they see it is an elusive source they have been trying so desperately to talk to for three days (an eternity for anyone in the news industry).
Why am I blogging about this today? Because, I am that girl.
Instead of sitting on my bed, staring at my cell phone, hoping and praying that I’ll get a call from that special guy, I’m sitting at my desk, staring at my office phone, hoping and praying for that red light to light up!
I hate the waiting game.
Last day at The Oklahoman
The Oklahoman has definitely been an experience I would not trade. These past ten weeks, I have seen different sides of this state that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. The interns were great people and we had a lot of laughes throughout the summer. I’m going to miss you all.
All the professionals who took me under their wing, thank you so much! I have learned so much from you and you all are great examples of the profession!
I can’t believe it is over but all the same, I’m excited to go back to OU and put what I learned into practice at The Oklahoma Daily.
Following US Marshals working Project Falcon
Project Falcon. It sounds like that should be a movie or some super spy mission. While it is neither of those things, it was no less exciting to watch from a distance as US Marshals and other law enforcement agency officials went out to fulfill Project Falcon. Project Falcon is a law enforcement task force led by the US Marshals to serve as many warrants to the individuals that are still at large. Usually it is a week long but this year, Marshals extended it to a month.
After first talking to Deputy U.S. Marshal Mike Parks, head of the Metro Fugitive Task Force the week before, the reporter I was following, Jay Marks, a videographer and myself went to Moore to shadow Parks, two other Marshals and two other law enforcement officials who were volunteering for Project Falcon. The warrant they had that day was for a man who had drugs less than 1,000 feet from a school.
The first stop was his apartment. While Jay and I were watching from the sidewalk, Parks and the others were led to the suspect’s best friends apartment and from there to the suspect’s girlfriend’s apartment. While at the girlfriend’s apartment complex, neighbors began to come outside as they saw US Marshals and a video camera wandering around.
After showing the others a picture of the suspect, a woman said she just saw him on a purple bike ride to the other side of the complex. Quickly, we got to the other side and the onlookers followed us.
When they knocked on the door with a purple bike in front of it, a 20-something year-old guy opened the door and it reeked from the smell of pot. He wasn’t our guy, though he looked similar. Though he continually denied he was high, he knew he was in trouble when an officer came out of the apartment with weed in his hand. Parks and the others then asked him if he knew the suspect and the guy said he knew him but stopped hanging out with him because he “saw the road he was going down and it was a bad one.” After a long talk, the guy made a deal with the Marshals that he would help them find their suspect.
While all of this was happening, neighbors pulled out their lawn chairs and watched. I’d say about 20 people were sitting outside their apartments watching.
With another lead at hand, the Marshals got ready to take off and we thought this was a good way to end our tag-along. After thanking Parks, I overheard the Marshals’ new source as he said one thing to his friend, “I can’t see straight.” That had to be the quote of the day.
What you can do with Legos
I think almost every little kid has built things with some legos.
I have to admit, after watching this video, I wanted to build something with legos or find a job so I can be called a Lego Master Builder. I’m such a dork, I’m so going to see this lego model of OKC in November. 
Oh, and seven days until Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince! Exciting!!
Michael Jackson, you will be missed
I definitely can say no one expected Michael Jackson would die today. When the news began to flood once doctors announced Jackson died of cardiac arrest, I was surprised to see how many people seemed to be affected by it. He truly was a beloved performer, even though he was slightly off.
He may have been a little eccentric but you can’t deny he was a hit maker. The best music of the 80′s came out of this man, and we all know how I feel about the 80′s. Plus, he was completely adorable when he was in the Jackson 5, as you can see below.
Today was a sad day in Hollywood. RIP Farah Fawcett and Michael Jackson.
The Killers and the 80′s
I miss the Killers. No, as far as I know, the Killers have not broken up. No, miss the Hot Fuss Killers. Let me explain.
I absolutely loved the Killers’ Hot Fuss album, I would blast it in my car, scream and dance along. I was stoked whenever I heard about their sophomore album, Sam’s Town, and bought it immediately. Unfortunately, I only liked one track, “When You Were Young.” But I had faith, I did the same for their third album, only to be again disappointed by them.
I went back later to give each another listen, hoping that maybe my tastes would become more susceptible to it like I had with Maroon 5 earlier. That was not the case. Instead I realized why.
I believe the reason I loved their first CD so much was because of its rock-ability with the undertones of 80′s bubbling underneath. Slowly but surely, the 80′s crept up more in the second album until the third album sounded like an album from the 80′s.
Now, grant it, I appreciate the 80′s but I see its music as a transition into music of today. I can safely say it is because of the 80′s that fads like boy bands and teeny pop stars came on the scene in the 90′s. To me, Wham’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” Dead or Alive’s “You Spin Me Round,” The Police’s “Every Breath You Take” and “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” are all examples of what the 80′s has to offer me: a good laugh.
The examples are below.
The Police videos disabled the embed but here are the links:
Every Breath You Take
Don’t Stand So Close to Me
I know they won’t go back and I don’t expect the Killers to go back to their earlier sound, but I will still say I miss them.
19 days until Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince!
Start the Harry Potter countdown!
Where am I going to be July 14? Waiting in line to watch the sixth installment of the Harry Potter movies! After pushing the movie’s theatrical release date back to almost a year, I am definitely needing my Harry Potter fix, especially since everyone has gone into a Twilight frenzy (something I completely do not understand. Oh, I can’t go outside…why? Because I sparkle!). While pirates may have beat out the ninjas, I refuse to accept that the Twilight vampires will dominate over the Harry Potter wizards.
Hurry! Tickets are on sale now and if you want to go to someplace like the Warren, you have got to get your tickets now!
Experience leads to learning
With experience, you gain more knowledge but also realize you have much more to learn. Yesterday was one of those days for me. As an intern for the Oklahoma Publishing Company, we are asked to participate in the Oklahoma City Greater Grads program. We sit, we eat free food, while people from Oklahoma City talk about how great Oklahoma City is as a community.
At first, everything was going as normal. A man was at the front, talking about the history of the Oklahoma City political scene. After our food was distributed, the intern (not from OPUBCO) sitting in front of me started choking. At first, the table was unsure if he was sick or if he were choking. When we realized it was the latter, the table was divided between how we should help. My first instinct was to grab someone to help him. Luckily, the person sitting next to him knew the heimlich maneuver.
It was at that moment that I realized, I should probably learn the heimlich maneuver for future reference. By the way, the culprit of his choking fit was a piece of broccoli.
Without the Internet, my life would cease to exist
Alright, that sounded a little melodramatic, didn’t it? In all honestly though, let’s think about it, without the Internet we wouldn’t have e-mails, we wouldn’t have facebook, we wouldn’t have twitter, we wouldn’t be able to chat with friends, we wouldn’t know what was going on halfway across the world in less than 30 seconds, we wouldn’t be able to catch that episode from our TV show obsession that we missed last night, we wouldn’t be able to communicate to the outside world, we would cease to exist. Alright, there I go again. But honestly, right now, I just feel overwhelmed by the rapid technology racing past me.
Let’s take a look here though. With the way things are rapidly changing because of Internet, new social connections and norms are beginning to appear. I have a few facebook friends that I have never met in real life and some people I talk to on facebook that I hardly ever talk to in person even though we may share a class together and when I sit back and ponder on it, I can’t help but think how ridiculous that all sounds. Are we slowly trading actual human interaction for virtual interaction so we can sit in our pajamas and talk to someone?
I was reading a blog of one of my favorite and one of the most talented violinsts at this time, Hillary Hahn, and she brought up a few good points. For instance she said, “If you are Tweeting, then you might as well check your emails, and then you might as well just turn on the camera and make a recording for YouTube, and then you might as well have a little chat online while you’re at it, or play a game of Tetris or Scrabble, or write down ideas for that presentation you have to give next week. In that case, really, the question is, why are you here? Are you enjoying the beauty of the live concert experience, in which moments are fleeting and you have to get caught up in the flow because it will never be the same again?” (http://www.violinist.com/blog/HilaryHahn/20096/10222/) I have to wonder that too, with technology growing at such a rapid rate, will things like going to a live concert to take in the experience be forever extinct?
Will we resort to an existance where we are strapped to a computer, limited because we cannot bare to be away from the virtual world? Is the human race doomed to become the slobs that Pixar portrayed us as in Wall-E? Or is our future going to something as creepy as the video below portrays?
Now grant it, I love technology. It has made research so much easier, it has made writing so much easier and it has made keeping in contact with friends so much easier, connecting everyone. I’ll admit it, I’m dependent on the Internet but if I am expected to start dating someone via World of Warcraft or Second Life, that’s where I put my foot down. Remember, even if we feel connected to someone on the Internet, in actuality, you are sitting alone in a room.
Verbosity challenge…
Apparently, I am not a very talkative person. If you know me, then you are probably laughing at how ridiculous that statement sounds at this point, but I guess I’m not talkative unless I get to know a person or if I’m sitting next to someone for long periods of time. In the newsroom, staff writer Jesse Olivarez has decided to associate me with the President Calvin Coolidge, the 30th President of the United States. Now, I’m a pretty big history buff (my friends can attest to that), believe that knowing your history is one of the keys to living a better future and I know a lot of, what others would think is, useless trivia from the past but even I had never heard of the story that Jesse sent me, a story about good ol’ Calvin Coolidge.
‘Silent Cal,’ as he was called, was known for speaking very little. Once at a dinner party, a talkative socialite told him that she would bet money that she could get him to speak three words before the dinner was over.
To which he replied, ‘You lose.’
And she did.”
Now, Jesse is on a mission, to get me to verbalize a fully constructed sentence to him before the end of the internship. So far, he has had no success. Good luck, Jesse. This is going to be interesting.
