I hear my parents talk about how movies like The Exorcist and how for days they slept with a nightlight – multiple nightlights – or in their parents’ bed.

Step up your game, Hollywood, start putting the scary back in to America.

We haven’t had any of those movies lately. I watch scary movies now and all I can think about is how all the characters are idiots.

NO! NO! DON’T GO IN THAT ROOM! ARE YOU STUPID?!

SHOOT HIM! SHOOT HIM! WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!

Just a few random yells made at the T.V. when I’m watching a “horror” movie.

Horror movies these days just don’t cut it. With all the advances we have in technology, and all that can be done in cinematography, shouldn’t scary movies be a bit more … scary?

It seems they all follow the one of two scripts:

Script 1: Cute newlywed/broken couple out on their honeymoon/weekend retreat to save their marriage, when they take a shortcut/their car breaks down, and they run into an abandoned/nice building that turns out to be more than they bargained for.

Script 2: Nice, All-American family is staying at home when a crazy psychopath invades their home and kills almost everyone in the family.

Sound familiar?

The horror movie genre has gone soft and horror movies these days are terrible; even boring. The last scary movie that even remotely scared me was The Ring, and that’s only because my phone rang as soon as I turned the DVD player off – no joke, one of the scariest moments of my life.

Hollywood and all the film writers out there need to step up their game and start putting the scary back in to America.

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Don’t get me wrong, I know this is serious, and if things aren’t handled correctly, the situation can become worse. But let’s look at the facts before we fall into a world of chaos because of this:

As of Saturday, May 2, there are 161 cases of swine flu in the U.S. That’s 161 people out about three-hundred million with confirmed cases of swine flu.

Worldwide, 705 people are confirmed to have swine flu. The estimated number of people on earth today is about 6.77 billion.

That means, roughly, one in ever 9,600,000 people on the planet will contract swine flu.

I don’t know about you, but I like my odds of staying swine flu free.

The odds of catching it decrease even more because the majority of cases come from people have traveled to Mexico. But even then, Friday, May 1, was the first night since the outbreak that Mexico reported no deaths. Let’s not forget the fact that only one person outside of Mexico has died because of swine flu.

I’m happy to see the government taking all the precautions necessary, but everyone should continue their every day lives.

There is one upside to the swine flu scare, though: All the kids whose school is cancelled have to love the early vacation.

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I was watching Real Sports with Bryan Gumbel on HBO the other night; his show tackles not only big stories in major-league sports, but sports across the country.

They covered a story about schools across the U.S. prohibiting kids from playing dodgeball.

Their reason: Not everyone wins in dodgeball, and the kids who lose feel bad about themselves. Supporters of the movement feel that no young child should feel like a loser and everyone should be a winner.

Um … News flash: That’s not the real world, people. Last time I checked, not everyone was a winner. Why all of a sudden is this movement of protecting kids from the real world making such drastic strides? Better yet, why is it happening at all?

It doesn’t stop there. No, it gets worse. A school has banned the game Tag, where kids run around trying not to be tagged by the person who is “it.” Instead the principal invented a new game called Shadow Tag where students step on each other’s shadows and they’re “it.”

The principal said playing Tag promotes students hitting each other and can cause students to get hurt.

That same principal has banned any kind of student touching at her school. Kids have to do air hugs and air high fives.

Not to sound cliché but this really grinds my gears.

The reporter of the story hit the nail on the head when he called the movement the “Wussification of America.”

There are even schools in Dallas going as far as not allowing students to fail classes. Some schools have set the lowest grade a student can make to 70; others have set it at 50.

What is going on, America?

The idea may be that the kids are being protected from failure now, and not feeling like a loser, but what happens when they hit college and receive that first failing grade? Or they didn’t make the team they practiced so hard for? It’s going to crush them even more because they’ve never felt failure or been rejected before.

It’s time to get back to the tougher side of things. Sure it’s going to hurt when you’re child comes home crying because they didn’t make the team. But that’s when you push them to practice and try again next year.
The sooner this Wussification movement stops, the better off we all will be.

But a recent study by U.S. researchers has shown that students who chew gum in class – especially those in math classes – perform better than those who don’t chew gum.

The 14-week study was funded by Wrigley, a gum maker, and led by Craig Johnston and a team from Baylor College of Medicine located in Houston.

108 college students ranging from 13- to16-years-old were studied at a Houston charter school that serves mainly low-income Hispanic students.

About half of the students chewed a stick of gum during class, tests and homework. Eighty-six percent of the time while in math class, and 36 percent of the time while doing homework. The other half of students didn’t chew gum.

The results showed that after 14 weeks, the students who chewed gum showed a three percent increase in their math scores, according to the Texas Knowledge of Assessment and Skills, or TAKS test.

Johnson and his associates said the results were a small but statistical change.

Now where was this study when I was still in the lower education system? Remember the kid that was always getting in trouble for chewing gum in class? That was me.

At least it all makes sense why my math skills are so bad now, every time I got in trouble in math for chewing gum; I lost a bit of mathematical knowledge.

Where exactly was this when I was in high school?

State representative Joe Deshotel, D-Beaumont, filed a bill to the Texas Legislators that would pay high school students at lower performing schools for their good grades.

I knew I should have failed those last few years of high school!

The money would come from the estimated $6 billion Texas is expected to receive in stimulus funds for education. A pilot program will be enacted for a few years, and if proven effective, the state may create a permanent program in the future.

Such programs have already been enacted in New York, Arizona and Washington D.C.

Freshman at schools rated academically unacceptable could earn $50 for each A, $35 for a B and $20 for a C in their core classes, which includes science, math, social studies and English classes.

“It would definitely give me incentive to do better in school,” said Ethan Keyser, a freshman at Willis High School in Conroe, TX. “[It would be] even better for the kids making really bad grades.”

There are a lot of critics to the bill, though.

Take Barry Schwartz, a professor of psychology at Swarthmore College.

“The downside to this is being ignored by those who support it, which is that once kids become accustomed to this, they become dependent,” he said in an article in the Ft. Worth Star Telegram. “They’ll want someone walking behind them the rest of their lives with an M&M to make sure they are rewarded for everything they do.”

President Obama’s Science Adviser John Holdren said that the idea has sprung due to the fact that global warming is happening so rapidly.

The idea is called geoengineering, a concept to use technology to cool the climate. Although there have been many options raised, one leading the pack is by Holdren, which would involve shooting pollution particles into the upper parts of the atmosphere to deflect the sun’s U.V. rays.

Temperatures should be kept from rising more than 3.6 degrees, Holdren said. Industrialized nations need to begin to cut their carbon dioxide cost by 2015 with undeveloped nations following suite.

In recent years, America has been split on whether the issue of global warming is a myth or something that the world should be concerned with. Many experts now believe that the rise of a few degrees of the earth’s temperature could cause drastic conditions, such as rising seas or harsh drought conditions.

Holdren believes that Earth could be only six years away from losing Arctic summer sea ice, which could cause a major shift to the earth’s climate.

“The trouble is that no one knows when these things are coming,” Holden said.

Other ideas to reduce global warming:

• Shooting sulfer particles into the upper atmosphere. The idea takes after volcanoes in which they both screen out any incoming sunlight.
• Creating artificial trees. The “trees” would suck a lot of carbon dioxide gas from the air and store it within themselves.

Think about it, we could have about three million Americans with their businesses making millions and receiving millions upon millions of dollars. Not only will this stop American companies outsourcing overseas but it will also stimulate the American economy back to the most powerful economy in the world.

Now not all the businesses are going to be successful, that’s part of the free market system. Businesses will be bought out for millions, some businesses will fail, but with a record number of millionaires in America, we can all help each other out a bit.

The idea may be a bit far-fetched but who knows, maybe the world needs a few radical ideas thrown in the mix to smooth things out.

Of the 1,023 Americans surveyed by the Opinion Research Corp and CNN, 76 percent, or about 777 Americans, agreed that the government should let General Motors and Chrysler, America’s two biggest automotive companies, file for bankruptcy and not be given any government assistance.

Sixty-three percent said they weren’t likely to buy from an automaker that was bankrupt.

Now here’s how I see it, along with 22 percent of Americans: With the current state of the economy, shouldn’t we be keeping the money here at home instead of allowing two of our biggest companies go under?

We need to be keeping the money in our economy rather than let two of our biggest companies falter and have our American dollars be sent overseas to stimulate the economies of other countries.

If the government were to loan more money to the two automakers, regulations should be set to where the money will be paid back within a certain timeframe and with a high interest rate, which will help bring back our economy. Regulations also should be set in place where the two companies cannot go out and have a huge “weekend retreat” (cough, cough AIG) and none of the higher ups can receive their HUGE insane bonuses.

They need to stop being so greedy and take a hit, too. We all know all of us here in Middle America are feeling the burn.

A son in Austria found that out the hard way after his mother’s non-stop repeated calls.

A court in Klagenfurt, Austria fined her for repeatedly calling her son – some times up to 49 times a day.

Yes, mom, my shower went fine and no, I didn’t use the soap you bought me.

Two minutes later …

Yes, mom, my oatmeal is hot enough. No, I don’t need you to give me a ride to work.

49 times a day, really? Isn’t there a point where if you are the son you just turn your phone off? Press the ignore button? Heck, may be

even change your number?

Sorry, moms, but isn’t that a little much? I know you all love your children and all but after five or six times a day wouldn’t you even get

tired of talking to them?

Obviously not for the 73-year-old Austria mom, the son finally had enough and took her to court.

The court fined her 360 euros, or about $478, for stalking.

“I just wanted to talk to him,” the mother told the court, according to Kleine Zeitung, an Austrian newspaper.