Time To End The Fear

Most people have fear in their lives. It’s inevitable. Fear is an emotion; a primal instinct. For many people, there are certain fears that are much more prevalent than others. Often, fear will affect people more in childhood; fears like the boogeyman, which is really just a sweater hanging in the closet, or a cat under the bed. As you grow older, you may lose old fears and gain new ones. You realize that the boogeyman from your childhood is just a sweater, but now you’re afraid that your loved one is cheating on you with the next door neighbour. This is how fear can play with your mind, but fear is just an emotion.

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Feature: A Teacher's Fears

In grades 5 and 6, I had my favourite teacher, and for years I’ve always thought of them as two of my favourite grades. She was always kind to us, and an incredibly fun teacher. She joked around with us and made us all laugh. Did fear ever play any part in anything she did for us, her students? The only fear any of us really knew of with her was her debilitating fear of mice (which we teased her for at every chance). But why does she have that fear? What other fears affect her on a daily basis? Now, years later, I’ve been given the chance to sit and talk to my grade five teacher, Sandy Giesbrecht, about her fears.

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Fiction: Fear Itself

Ever since I was little, I’ve had nightmares. These nightmares can start out in the guise of amazing dreams; unending happiness. I can be at a party with all my friends, or sitting by a romantic lake with the girl of my dreams. Everything seems so perfect. And for a while, I believe that this is a beautiful dream; that when I wake up, I’ll feel peaceful and at ease and well rested.

Unfortunately, all good things come to an end. Our minds can play tricks on us. At some point during these beautiful dreams, I’ll walk into a room. It will be a dark room. I can be looking for the simplest thing; batteries or a flashlight. This room is usually the basement, but not always. In this room, I will be alone, far from everyone else around me. And in this room, dreams become nightmares.

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What Lurks In The Shadows; Why We Love Horror

I can see something moving in the shadows. It looks like eyes are watching me, but I know that’s not possible. I tell myself it’s just my imagination; that nothing could have got in my bedroom without me seeing it. My door is firmly closed, and the windows are shut and locked. The blinds are open, letting in light from the street beyond. Someone’s out there. I can feel them watching me. I roll over, pulling the blankets up to my face, and again tell myself it’s just my imagination. Nothing can hurt me here.

Then it moves forward from the shadows…

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Review: You Are Not A Gadget by Jaron Lanier

There are many different books out there about technology’s effects on humanity. You Are Not A Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier is one such book. Lanier gives his opinion on what the internet is doing to us, and he doesn’t think it’s good. Lanier brings up multiple reasons why technology affects us harshly, and I am inclined to disagree with him. I think Lanier is being far too pessimistic to seem realistic, and his manifesto sounds more like technology is leading us towards some sort of apocalypse.

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