JamesOzAmbitions of A Willing Teenager

It was my birthday yesterday (28/06) Quite a day really, Had some smartass kid hack into my gmail. I don’t quite know the full damage they’ve caused but I’ve been up all night cleaning all of our computers and trying to recover gaming accounts I’ve lost. Overall my day was shit. My parents were fighting and mum wouldn’t stop complaining that my father would make a scene if we went out in public for dinner… so we were stuck at home eating take away.

My 16th birthday was spent locked in my room, drinking most of the day.. Hoping I can recover from this immature hacker and make sure everything is safe, I’m hoping to have this blog design done within 2-3 days and my 2 other sites launched. – I’ll post more information about them later.

I’m off to get a bite to eat!

Myspace.com currently claims over 110 million active monthly users, ranked as the 6th most visited website worldwide by Alexa.com. Created for users to interact and be able to communicate with people around the world featured in every global country of the world.

Myspace.com is causing a serious problem around the world. I see peers at school on MySpace, sending comments and messaging people, they’re addicted and don’t even know it. You ask them why they can’t just focus on school and check their comments when they get home, most of the replies you get are sadly about MySpace ‘being their life’ or they need to catch up on the latest gossip. What happen to the days where you’d all talk in the office on your lunch break or out in the courtyard, now it’s just “I’ll comment you on MySpace tonight with the gossip” You may not think this is a serious issue but I’ve dug further into this issue and the following articles may cause horrific thoughts or make you realize this is a serious problem..

Megan Meier was a 13 year old teenager; she suffered from clinical depression, ADD and low self-esteem. She had all the average teen problems and was about to start a brand new school. She let go of a friendship in her neighborhood and then all her problems begin. People in her street set out and created “Josh” They become close and she finally becomes happy, having a close friend, little did she know Josh was make-believe and this was fueled by hatred. Megan begins receiving hateful comments from Josh. The last comment recorded “Everybody in O’Fallon knows how you are. You are a bad person and everybody hates you. Have a shitty rest of your life. The world would be a better place without you.” Megan was later found hanging in a noose, they performed CPR and she was sent to hospital, she suffered brain damage and died later that day. Her parents later found out that Josh was made to take revenge on Megan for not being friends with a girl on the street. Lori Drew later admitted to controlling the MySpace account and sending the comments, she claims her daughter had nothing to do with the horrific act. Lori Drew came out with this statement

“Everyone needs to leave her alone. None of you can possibly know her involvement, and none of you can possibly know what she’s gone through. She’s just a kid. She doesn’t deserve these brutal verbal attacks. Please stop”

How dare Lori Drew come out with such a hypocritical statement stating that YOUR daughter doesn’t deserve these brutal verbal attacks. HOW DARE YOU CAUSE A KID TO COMMIT SUICIDE OVER SOMETHING THAT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU. How could a mother send abusive attacks over MySpace and then come out saying people to leave her daughter alone after pushing a clinically depressed teenager to suicide.

Sadly, due to this being such a horrific crime that has never have been seen before, it never had a law passed to prosecute such acts. Lori Drew got off with one count of conspiracy and three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to obtain information to inflict emotional distress. She’ll face a maximum of 5 years jail.

Sadly this isn’t the only case of suicide caused by MySpace, A girl that I met once at a school excursion, pretty and had perfect marks, went to an all girl’s school. Sadly took her life over bullying on MySpace and at school.

We can only hope that laws are past to protect people from online bullying and abuse. People don’t deserve to have to take their lives over being bullied or being hurt, they deserve a fair chance to live and deserve to be happy. People need to watch their children’s MySpace use, limit the kids use and hopefully MySpace can make something to protect them.

If you’re ever in trouble – I recommend to check out
http://www.reachout.com.au or your local kids help line, they’re anonymous.

Resources:

November 12, 2007
‘My Space’ hoax ends with suicide of Dardenne Prairie teen
(Suburban Journals: Steve Pokin)

November 12, 2007
MySpace Cruel Prank Leads To Teen’s Suicide
(Death by 1000 Papercuts)
Reprints the St. Charles Journal story complete, with some additional commentary.

November 13, 2007
POKIN AROUND: A real person, a real death
(St. Charles Journal: Steve Pokin)

November 13, 2007
Readers respond in force to story on suicide, MySpace hoax
(St. Charles Journal: Steve Pokin)

November 14, 2007
Girl Commits Suicide Over Internet Prank by ADULTS—Who is Responsible?
(Orlando Sentinel)

November 15, 2007
MySpace Suicide: Megan Meier’s Story May Prevent Others
(Death by 1000 Papercuts)

May 16, 2008
Lori Drew charged over MySpace suicide
(The Sydney Morning Herald)

Sorry I haven’t posted or told people who read my blog where I went, I went away to Queensland, Australia for a week on a school camp. Not sure why they called it a camp, we visited theme parks everyday and ended up shopping everyday with a 4 star hotel room to pass out in!
How can that possibly be camping? I’m not complaining but I wish every camp was this great! I’m not sure if I’ll write a full break down of how camp was, A lot is still a complete blur to me. It’s something you’ll only ever experience once, being able to talk to people you’ve never interacted with ever and actually getting along with them and being yourself, I actually told some close friends things about me, like that I was on anti-depressants or things that have gone on in my life. The amount of money paid for camp was worth it, i know I’ve made friends I’ll never lose now and looking back at camp, It makes me smile and just wish it went for longer.

Here’s a quick break down of my trip.

• 7am Sunday Morning – We all have to meet at the school so we can board for our long bus trip ahead of us.
• We stopped for several stops through-out the day and night, Roughly every 3-4 hours. Stopping at a McDonald’s or a petrol station, Everyone would anxiously get off the bus, stretch the legs and stock up on lollies, food and energy drinks. We stopped for dinner at about 8pm in an Aboriginal town, warned to keep safe and not to talk to anyone, that freaked a lot of us out but we kept to ourselves and got the fuck out of there!
• Nobody slept during the night, We watched several movies and I can remember the movie was just getting scary, into the next scene where you’d shit yourself. All you heard was a massive BANG everything jumped and you could hear screams coming from the bus but it was not from the movie…. We hit and killed an adult kangaroo. I remember pulling over and looking at the damage, It was not that bad but would have totaled a car, easily.
• Monday – During the night we hit and most likely killed several more kangaroos and finally got into Queensland at 2:42am on Monday morning, we still had a few hours of travel left and everyone was still wide eye awake, giggling and flirting became as natural as talking.. Many of the scenes we past reminded me of horror movies…
• Once getting off the bus, We walked around Surfers Paradise. Around the shops and on the beautiful beach, we finally checked in, had dinner and everyone was pretty much asleep.
• Tuesday – We went to Warner Brothers MovieWorld. This is my second time at this park and It was still great in my eyes! – We got home about 6, had dinner, chilled and went to bed.
• Wednesday - We went to DreamWorld, I’ve actually never been here before, I was excited till I got in, It was just a stupid kids park. Filled with all things I watched as a child.
• Thursday – We had a free day to ourselves, a few mates and I went up to harbour town (A great shopping centre) We Looked around then went back to the hotel, went up to Pacific Fair ( Biggest shopping centre in Southern hemisophere) and watched a movie, went and shopped for abit and got complimented on the band shirt i had on – Ended up going to Hooters thursday night for dinner with family (Not with camp) and got photos with the hooter girls!
• Friday -  We went to Sea world, Sadly all the water rides were closed so this park was quite shit to be honest, we then got on a plane at about 5pm after being delayed and ended up back at the airport at 7:45 – We got on the bus and rode back to school – I ended up home by 9pm!

I’ve got photos, souvenirs and memories. I’ll get some photos of what I brought and some of the photos I’ve got.

I actually had to sit down for awhile and actually figure out what I wanted to say for this blog, I had a lot of it in my head already but I wasn’t sure if I was going to be fully open about it, We’ll see how this blog rolls out and I hope you can feel that this is raw emotion from a young teenager going through lifes day to day issues.

You could say that a lot of my family is really close, My cousin and mother are very close, practically a son to her and practically a mum to him. Always helped each other out and he actually always come to our house for meals etc. He then changed job shifts, everything changed, we’d never see him, He was like a bigger brother to me and when I didn’t see him anymore, it cut me deep. Something was going on and we knew something was going to go down. I felt i knew but couldn’t approach anybody and it finally all ended when he was fired from his job, he was living with my other cousin in the other side of town, He was missing work and such. The phones at my house were red hot off the hook for those few nights, It all ended when he fell asleep at the wheel of his car and hit another car – Luckily only injuring himself. He finally got incontact with everyone, fixing things and tonight he was actually over. It was just like old times, He was with us all, being the great person he was, still making jokes, still eating with us. When i saw him around the food. I knew this would have been a great blog topic because it’s how I felt.

I also thought about past memories with family. Sadly many of them are very depressing, I’d say close to 95% of all the memories I have of my father when i was younger were when he was drunk. I can remember being about 6 and at a hotel with my Mum and Dad, He was drunk and making a scene. I can still remember everytime he’d leave for work and he’d kiss me on the head and you could smell the beer on his breath. I can accept him for who he is and that he’s got a problem but its still sad to have these memories.

I just hope if i’m ever a father my kids never have to experience what I did. I think this blog actually has a message behind it, you need to focus on keeping your family close, they’re valuable and mean a lot to everyone, look back. I’m sure all of us have atleast one great memory with a family member.

I still haven’t been able to finish my blog design, The only thing missing is my wonderful vector which John was making for me, I may have to learn how to vector or pay some top dollars to get one made quickly, I really like my design and I hope I can be showing it off as soon as possible – Hurry up John! Later this week I should be hopefully launching 2 brand new sites, I can’t give to much detail on one of them but I can tell you my second website will be a professional blog brought to you by me, Hopefully supporting .com.au and actually helping out this industry, this blog on knivesforapro.com is a way for me to vent and just post about current life happenings. I doubt anyone reads this blog or wants to advertise on it so I’ll be rolling out a professional blog with my opinions and the latest news. Don’t worry, I’m still going to use and update Knivesforapro.com

I’ve got exams tomorrow (Tonight actually, its 2:17am) they start at around 10:00am I guess i’m sort of worried, its only an english exam and I’ve got everything ready but I haven’t really studied for english… Didn’t see the point seeing as we could take our novel in, i thought i could skim through it and get quotes etc. I’m actually quite pumped for this, I’m not sure what exam I have afterwoulds but hopefully its business.

I’m actually turning 16 in 19 days and I’ve been looking at cars, legally i can’t drive till 18 but i could easily do something cheap up and fit gasoline so the fuel costs would drop, I’m looking towards an old holden Calais, they’re nice and drive well, hopefully I’ll have a car soon and be-able to post some pictures for everyone to oogle at.

Goodluck to anyone having exams in the next few weeks.