Category: Senior Literary

Just like everyone else, I am also dealing with college preparations. I just wanted to share some of the current plans here just so I can look back at this in my dorm or rented apartment/house/condo or my parent’s house and see how different my plans ended up being.

Initially, my plans were simple. I was going to go to USM for digital journalism and live my life as a freelance journalist or something like that. I was going to live in a dorm and rely heavy on scholarships. But then I realized their English program was heavy on creative writing and I decided I wanted to do that. But a tour around the communications building on the campus hanged that to broadcast journalism. Back then, I was very attached to USM as it is a school that many of my friends are at or are going to be, and it is close to home. So, letting it go became very hard and other colleges didn’t ever cross my mind.

It wasn’t until after I decided on the English degree again and began to apply for college. This was when I started expanding my horizons, as I knew it was dumb to just go with one school. I knew about the in-state schools and applied to all of those knowing I wouldn’t be going to any of them, but I did begin to realize that I may be missing out my not visiting any of these campuses. This made me cross a few off the list and bring others higher up. Belhaven was almost equivalent to USM on my list as I was able to imagine myself living there to a certain extent, but in the end, I feel as if my religious beliefs would not align with those of the students there. 

An English degree then began to look a lot less appealing when I realized how different an English class and a creative writing class could be. I’ve always been more in touch with the creative side of literature rather than the technical/”boring” side. So, USM, though still being a top school out of technicality, became very vulnerable in this race and would make it very easy to move out of the way. That is what happened after the professor for creative writing at Belhaven told me about the University of South Carolina. This school seemed like a great choice for me because my father lives an hour away, but I still didn’t like the idea of being away from my friends. That idea sat for a little bit until my father began telling me things about the school. One thing he informed me of was that the school had a very impressive film program. This sparked an idea in my head. I’ve always wanted to write scripts and make movies one day, so why not study film? I began to research the school even more and now I can safely say that the University of South Carolina is now my top school. I will be applying for a primary major in either English or journalism, and a secondary major in Media Arts.

But that is not the end. Of course, there’s all the money and financial aid and stuff that needs to be worked out, but I have figured one thing out. I want to live off-campus and not with a family member. A friend and I will be moving into either and apartment, mobile home, or condo alongside attending college. Before that happens, I plan to get a job and work for the rest of the year and work all summer to save up money. I’m excited for this because of how badly I want control of my life. Coming to MSA have given me a taste of freedom, so now all I want is to go out and live in it. I know I can still feel freedom on campus, but it’s for the plot I swear.

If you would have asked me my opinion on Superman like two months ago, I would have said that I hate him and he’s lame, but if you ask me now, I would say that I love him, but he’s still lame in a good way.  So, where did the switch come from? Well, it may have started on a very late night almost like 3 am when I watched Superman Returns. I did not like the movie at first, but all of a sudden, I started seeing art of Superman and I consumed it because of course I did, so the more media I consumed the more I begun to understand him. So where am I going with this? Well, let’s talk about Superman Returns (2006). Now most of this is gonna be explained through memory and a little research because I can’t watch it for some reason. It’s probably on a streaming service but I have the DVD, and it won’t work… anyways. 

So, Superman is missing! He’s been gone for five years to look at Krypton, the planet he came from, to find any survivors. He finds nothing, of course. Lex Luthor is out of jail, and we see him in the fortress of solitude, Superman’s home in the Arctic or whatever. So, Superman comes back and continues to work at the Daily Planet. I’m not sure if I’m skipping much because I did NOT see the beginning of this movie. I just remember Clark Kent going into the Daily Planet. He finds out that Lois Lane is married to this guy named Richard and they have a five-year old son named Jason (she moved on quick omg). He sees a picture of her and her new family. He also sees that she won a Pulitzer Prize for a paper called, “Why the World Doesn’t Need Superman.” So, he’s like really salty at this point. Also, Lois Lane doesn’t know that Clark is Superman.

But he goes out with his friend, Jimmy, to a bar, and they’re watching tv. Theres this space shuttle that’s piggy backing off of an airplane, and Lois and a couple other journalists are in the plan which is honestly really unsafe now that I’m writing it. But the Shuttle was meant to detach from the plane and go into space while the plane continues its trip. This goes wrong because remember Lex Luther? Yeah, he stole a crystal from the fortress of solitude because the material that it’s made of generates more crystals, or idk how it works, but the little crystal can make bigger crystal. So, why is he doing that? We’ll get back to that, but when the crystal is dropped into water, it makes all the power in Metropolis go out, and this messes with the plane, so the shuttle doesn’t detach. So, Superman has to go save everyone, and he takes a really long time guiding the shuttle into space because he flies it all the way out of the atmosphere like really slowly, like there isn’t a plane hurdling to the ground as we speak. Of course, he catches it and sits in a baseball field where a game is going on because there’s a crowd of people there, but this is how everyone finds out that Superman has returned!! (omg like the title). Lois Lane sees him because he goes into the plane and he’s all like, “Is everyone okay”, but he’s staring right at her like a loser. And they just kind of stare at each other until everyone processes that Superman is back and he leaves. 

So, everyone is happy because he’s back! You know who’s not happy? Lex freaking Luthor. So, he works with this girl named Kitty who he uses as a distraction. He puts her in a car, cuts the breaks, and she makes a bunch of commotion to get Superman’s attention, and distract him from the fact that Lex Luthor and his goons are stealing Kryptonite from the museum. Superman is really lame for letting that slide, like he doesn’t even find out about it until the next day because he gets assigned to figure out why the blackout happened while Lois Lane has to interview Superman, which she doesn’t want to do because she’s still in love with him but she’s married or whatever, and she brings up the museum, and Clark is like omg what are you talking about?? But yeah, there’s like a scene where she goes out to smoke and Clark bumps into her, so he dresses up as Superman and goes onto the roof to like to fly her around town, and they get back and almost kiss, and as I was watching it, I realized that if I ever met a girl who was with Superman, then I would never even try because how do you even compare to that?? But she’s really upset with him because he left without saying goodbye or whatever.

Anyways! A day passes or something, and she is supposed to be going to a dinner party but instead she goes to investigate the blackout which isn’t what she’s supposed to be doing, but she has Jason with her because Richard didn’t pick him up from school so she had to, and for some reason she brings him with her onto the boat. And Jason is like a chronically ill child, like he has a bunch of things going on with him like all of the time.  She goes onto the boat and sees Lex freaking Luthor. So, he gets his goons to keep an eye on her and the boy while he tells her his master plan which is to use the Kryptonite Crystal, infuse it with Kryptonite, and then make his own super continent where he’s like King, and Superman can’t live there because it’s made of Kryptonite. And so around this time in the movie, Kitty is starting to get nervous because she didn’t know that a bunch of people were gonna get hurt. But get this. When Lex Luthor is telling Lois Lane, he’s holding Kryptonite and little Jason has a weird reaction to it. So, Lex Luthor is like, who is that baby’s father, and Lois Lane is like Richard obviously! Yeah whatever… So, he leaves, and she like tries to send a fax message to someone for help?? But the goon that’s in the room goes to attack her and all of a sudden, a freaking piano flies at him, and Jason, or as I like to call him baby superman, threw that freaking piano. And like you don’t see it happen, but you see it fly towards the man, and it pans back to Jason, and it’s really funny. And like of course it’s Superman’s baby. He’s five years old!!! Superman left five years ago!!! If I was Richard, I wouldn’t even have tried with Lois Lane. Like I know they’re together, but Superman was her ex, bro. 

Anyways, Lex Luthor goes and drops the crystal into the ocean, and it starts expanding. I think around this time the boat gets split in half and Lois Lane and Jason are stuck, and she’s trying to get him to use his powers to get them out but for some reason he’s too scared to do it, so they’re stuck and that’s like all I remember from that part. Idk who saves them. I assume Superman does, but it might’ve been Ricard. Whatever. Superman goes to Lex Luthor on the island, and he’s weak because it’s made of Kryptonite. Lex Luthor impales him with a piece of Kryptonite and then pushes him in the ocean. And Richard is piloting a sea plane because he went out the help Lois Lane, and she sees Superman in the water because she’s like, “We have to go save him!” And man, if I was Richard, I would not have turned back because Superman can really just take your girl at any minute. But he goes back and she jumps into the water to haul him on the plane, and she gives him mouth to mouth, and Richard is just sitting there! 

Okay, I’m gonna drop the fact that Richard should absolutely be on his toes with Superman around. Actually, no I won’t, but you’ll see why. Anyway, she saves him and he goes underwater to pick up the landmass that is forming and take it into space. So, Lex Luthor’s goons die because this big rock falls on them, and it’s just him and Kitty who get on this helicopter to escape but she throws the crystals out because she doesn’t want anyone else getting hurt. They get stranded on an island after running out of fuel. Superman throws the landmass into space and immediately falls back onto Earth, weakened. So, people try to save him. They take him to the hospital but obviously can’t do much because he’s an alien and his skin is too hard for them to use needles because like the man of steel duh. Lois Lane pulls up with Jason, and she’s like talking to Superman while he’s in the coma, and then she kisses him on the lips!!! before she leaves. When they doctors go to check on him later, he’s gone. Where is he? He’s in baby superman’s bedroom, giving him a speech that his father gave him when he was a child. Baby Superman is asleep, and Superman knows that it’s his baby. But he leaves, and we see that Lois Lane is writing a new paper called, “Why the World Needs Superman.” and if I was Richard, that would be my breaking point… At the end of the movie, he like flies up into space, and it’s really cinematic. 

Anyways, I really loved this movie. And now I love Superman! The movie is kind of dumb, but it was really intriguing for actual first introduction to Superman… I may have not described it in the best way, but I’d honestly recommend this movie. Now, I may not be the person to take recommendations from, but I just like to be entertained, and I love Superman and how evil Lex Luthor is, and I love Lois Lane even if she made some interesting choices in this movie…. But yes! That is Superman Returns.

In the United States, there are more guns than people. It’s a simple, harrowing fact. For every two American citizens, there are about three guns. In 2023, Mississippi had the highest firearm death rate in the US, after the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C. In that same year, the leading cause of death for children was not sickness. It was not accidents. It was gunfire. These statistics have not shrunk since that time. In fact, we had six back-to-back shootings in a matter of three days. October 10th, 11th, and 12th all hosted a mass shooting. 

October 10th.

The first was in Rolling Fork, at South Delta High. Two people are in custody in connection to this shooting, though WAPT 16 News says that it is unclear if anyone was injured. 

168 miles away, in Heidelberg, two people were killed and one died a few days later from unspecified injuries, again at a football game. The victims were identified as follows: Mikeia McCray, Cayus Stevens, and Chris Newell. Mikeia was 28 and the mother of four. Chris Newell was 35. Cayus Stevens was 25. Six people have been arrested. The first, Tylar Jarod Goodloe, has been charged with two counts of capital murder, and one count of being in possession of a deadly weapon on educational property. His bail has been set at over 2 million. Damarin Starks and Jaylen Gammage were arrested and both charged with accessory after the fact and tampering with physical evidence. Jadarius Page was charged with one count of accessory after the fact. Finally, Jabari Collins was charged with possession of a deadly weapon on educational property. The final person arrested is unable to be identified publicly because they are a minor. 

The Leland shooting was the last of that night, but arguably the most violent. Around midnight people gathered on Main Street after the game. After a disagreement, gunfire erupted through the crowd, hitting eighteen people, killing seven. The four victims killed at the scene were Oreshama Johnson, Calvin Plant, Shelbyona Powell, and Kaslyn Johnson. Two died the next morning: Amos Brantley Jr., and LaMichael Jones. On the 18th, Ebanee Williams died. As this post is being written, this is the deadliest mass shooting in the US in 2025. Nine suspects were arrested. Teviyon L. Powell, William Bryant, Terrogernal Martin, and Morgan Lattimore were all charged with capital murder, and Latoya A. Powell was charged with attempted murder. Latoya and Teviyon Powell were aunt and nephew, and Shelbyona Powell was Latoya Powell’s niece. Four arrestees have not been publicly identified.

October 11th.

On October 11th, an 11-year-old boy was shot in the stomach in the tailgating area of Jackson’s Veterans Memorial Stadium during a football event. It is still an active and ongoing investigation, but details about other victims have not been made publicly available. There is no suspect information. 

In Lorman, MS, on Alcorn State University’s campus, 29-year-old Brekyra Fisher of Vicksburg was killed near the Industrial Technology Building. Two others were injured. Taevion Doss has been arrested on charges of murder, two charges of aggravated assault, and possession of a firearm on educational property. Doss appeared before a judge on the 17th, but was denied bond.

October 12th.

Jackson was the site of the last shooting of the weekend. On Cynthia Rd, near Highway 49, a woman was struck in the head after bullets were fired into a grey Honda SUV. The male driver of the SUV pulled into a nearby Sprint Mart to call for help. Only the woman was injured, but her 6-year-old child was present.

Shootings like this have become all too common in Mississippi, and in our nation overall. Many proposals for stricter laws on guns have been shot down, opponents citing an attack on “2nd Amendment freedoms.” Gun violence is being marketed as a “complex issue” when it really isn’t. It’s difficult to say what should and shouldn’t be done, but this needs to be spoken about. 

Okay, this is going to be another serious blog for me. Normally I’m not the most political person. Not that I don’t care, I’ve just never educated myself like I should have. I knew what I needed to know, and I knew right from wrong, but recently I have been trying to change that. I think we all know that we are living in a time of fear, manipulation, division, and inhumanity. I would just like to talk about how this is affecting me and how I am scared. Maybe this will help me feel a little better about it all.

I can’t go too deep into everything, but I do want to talk about the things I have seen and the censorship that is going on. Jimmy Kimmel’s show was canceled due to something he said. He used his first amendment right, not to slander a death, not to talk ill of the people in the situation, but to tell the truth and call out the people who are using a tragic death to gain popularity. Though this is not the biggest thing that has happened recently, it makes me question what is next. Will I not be able to express my opinions in the future? Will my rights be taken from me because I don’t think the same way as all the people who like the color red? Will Big Brother be watching?

Another thing is the cruelties that are happening to innocent people who came to this country for a better life. You know, the thing that was promoted all those years ago. Like the stories you hear of immigrants seeing the Statue of Liberty for the first time. I can’t believe that people are being picked up off the street and put into prison for living their lives. Some people taken from COURT CASES who are in the process of getting their citizenships. Pregnant women and children are put into these facilities where they are denied treatment for illness along with poor quality of resources, causing their health to deteriorate more. I saw a story of a girl who was taken from her home while babysitting her siblings because she was not American. The worst part of that was they weren’t even looking for her. They were looking for the previous owner. She was a student, and she was ready to make a name for herself. Now, she sits in prison, calling her mother in pain due to her, now, poor health and the pain her scoliosis is causing her. Oh yeah, they aren’t even helping her with her diagnosed problems. This is the most shameful thing I have ever seen. We are seeing concentration camps pop up in the United States, land of the “free”. Free only if you are a rich white man in power.

There is so much more I could talk about, but I’ll end it with the gun violence in our country. Even though everyone says that banning guns will not help with anything going on right now, I don’t think keeping them so easy to get is helping either. There needs to be heavier restrictions. Almost anybody can go into a Walmart down in the south and purchase a shotgun without any background checks. That is horrible because what is stopping someone from buying that gun and shooting up the store? That should not be a question that needs to be asked. And now we are seeing people being murdered all because someone chose that it was their responsibility to make them stop spreading their beliefs. Whether someone is spreading good or bad beliefs, no one gets to determine whether they live or die. Another thing is that students can’t feel safe. School shootings are more common than they should be. We shouldn’t have that problem. Time and time again, we see it happen and the only people who try to prevent it are the schools themselves. And even then, that may not even happen. Then just like Kimmel said, people who only see red use these things to gain political points and spread more hate and violence. They pin the blame on the mentally ill, immigrants, trangenders, and all these people that don’t deserve the blame. Some not even making any sense. I saw one conservative man say transgender people probably kill more people than guns do every year. Make that make sense. At the end of the day, whoever pulled the trigger was able to purchase a gun, bring it into an event, and kill somebody and still, guns apparently aren’t the problem. Yes, people make the decisions to do these bad things, but it there are so many ways we can go about solving the situation instead of spreading more lies and hate. 

Like I said, there are so many other problems going on that shivers my timbers like financial aid cuts, Medicaid cuts, tax raises, and specific files not being released. All these things should not be issues, and you’d think it would be common sense, but it isn’t. But whatever gets the rich white men more money, right?

This is my LAST To Pimp A Butterfly blog, and I’m so excited about it. These songs mean so much to me, and Kendrick is a HUGE inspiration. I couldn’t get to into the other two songs because the last on is so long, but so important, and I actually want people to read this… Anyways, 

14. You Ain’t Gotta Lie (Momma said) = 4:01

“It’s all in your head, homie”

This whole song is practically based on not being your true self. The song starts with Kendrick telling us what his mama said. “I could spot you a mile away/I could see your insecurities written all over your face…Who you foolin’? Oh, you assuming you can just come and hang with the homies but your level of realness ain’t the same.” This is a play on a “mother intuition”. Being able to know things without being told it, and she knows that lies are being told. This song was inspired by Tupac Shakur’s song “Lie to kick it” which means that you don’t have to make up things to seem cool just so you can hang out. Kendrick even says, “You ain’t gotta lie to kick it” after naming things being said to clearly impress him, saying, “You sound like the feds, homie.” Later in the song Kendrick says, “The loudest one in a room, that’s a complex” referring to people who make themselves seem like they’re better than everyone by boasting and bragging about things when they don’t even have to do all that.

15. i = 5:36

“I love myself”

In an earlier blog, I mention how later in the album Kendrick makes a song about self-love, well this is that song! Kendrick says it loud in proud in this song that he loves himself. He says he’s been through a lot, but he knows God, and he’s holding onto hope and life even when people wanna bring him down. He talks about bad things happening but trying to stay positive while not ignoring those things at the same time. At one point Kendrick says that this is the best song he’s ever written since he never thought he’d make a song this positive when he grew up around so much negativity.  Further into the song, there is an argument in the crowd, and Kendrick does his best to settle them down by talking about all the rough stuff that has happened, so we need to stop causing problems with one another when the world already gives us so many. When he begins to rap again, he talked about the N word. He says, “N-E-G-U-S, definition: royalty, king royalty. /N-E-G-U-S, description: black emperor, king, ruler.” He says that we’ve been using the word wrong after “The history books overlooked the word and hide it/America tried to make it a house divided.” He ends the song by saying, “Kendrick Lamar, by far, realest Negus alive.”

16. Mortal Man = 12:07

“Only hope that we kinda have left is music”

In this song, Kendrick asks a question, “When sh*t hit the fan, is you still a fan?” He referenced many important activists in history, starting with Nelson Mandela. Kendrick says, “The ghost of Mandela, hope my flows stay propellin’/Let these words be your Earth and moon, you consume every message/As I lead this army, make room for mistakes and depression/And with that being said let me ask you a question:” Kendrick understands that he is important to the Black community, and how he must use his voice for greater things. The meaning of his question that he asks throughout the song is if he makes a mistake, will we still be with him. He asks if we believe in him or are we deceiving him. He asks if he was framed for a crime, would we take up for him or turn against him. He knows he has had a big impact on his community saying, “You tell me my song is more than a song, it’s surely a blessing.” Kendrick talks about his flaws like how he has abandonment issues, and he holds grudges, and he wants to be important like Nelson Mandela, and he says, “Don’t let me resent you/That’s not Nelson-like.” He continues to question loyalty of the people around him, “family, friends, fans, cats, dogs/Trees, plants, grass, how the wind blow, Murphy’s Law.” He is questioning this due to another line where he says, “How many leaders you said you needed, then left ’em for dead.” He names off Moses, Huey Newton, Detroit Red, Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, and even Michael Jackson.

The song goes into an interview, and Kendrick gives us the whole poem continuing from where we left off from Hood Politics, “A war that was based on apartheid and discrimination/Made me wanna go back to the city and tell the homies what I had learned/The word was ‘respect’/Just because you wore a different gang color than mine’s/Doesn’t mean I can’t respect you as a black man/Forgetting all the pain and hurt we caused each other in these streets/If I respect you, we unify and stop the enemy from killing us/But I don’t know I’m no mortal man/Maybe I’m just another n-“

He begins speaking to the person he’s interviewing about a metaphor of the ground. The man talks about the ground being poor people, and that it will soon open up and swallow the rich people. The man calls himself a “natural-born hustler” who had nothing but opportunities to get him where he is today. He had a terrible job and a terrible life, but he did all of that to eventually be more than he ever imagined. He says, “I made millions for a lot of people/Now it’s time to make millions for myself.” He kept his sanity by having a faith in God and faith in the game. He says, “All good things come to those who stay true.” And he believed he was always true.  He says, “A Black man only have five years we can exhibit maximum strength.” He says as teens, they’re strong, “Once you turn thirty… they take the heart and soul out of a Black man in this country.” I could rant about this interview for much longer, but I’ll cut it short. The title of the album comes from something Kendrick said a good friend wrong for him, describing his world. There is a caterpillar who is prisoner to the streets. It can only eat to protect its city. The more it eats, the more it learns to survive. The world shuns the caterpillar but praises the butterfly. The butterfly is talent, thoughtfulness, and beauty within the caterpillar, but “having a harsh outlook on life, the caterpillar sees the butterfly as weak/And figures out a way to pimp it to his own benefits.” But soon, the caterpillar becomes institutionalized inside its cocoon. He’s trapped, and while he is, he has a revelation of going home and “bringing back new concepts to this mad city.” When the caterpillar grows mentally, it becomes a butterfly. He asks the man what’s his perspective on it, but with no answer he calls his name. “‘Pac?” Tupac!! Isn’t that crazy? 

In this song Kendrick used an old interview that Tupac was on in 1994. Kendrick takes a lot of inspiration from Tupac and even planned to name the album Tu Pimp A Caterpillar. This album had a heavy grasp on me last year and I lost that passion over the summer. Coming back to this blog was difficult, but when I began to listen and think once again, I remembered how much I loved it. Kendrick may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I do encourage you guys to listen to some of these songs, DEFINITELY this one. Thank you!

As much as I hate to admit it, my music taste has been heavily influenced by my dad. Years of saying “No dad, that music sucks” have now come back to bite me, because a lot of his music tastes are actually very good. A couple years ago, me and my dad listened to Alt Nation on SiriusXM all the time. Every drive in the car was soundtracked by those songs. The first one that comes to mind is one called Chaise Longue by Wet Leg. I was instantly obsessed. Once Wet Leg released their self-titled debut, I listened to it on repeat for three months straight. That was back in 2022. Now, it’s 2025 and Wet Leg released their newest album, moisturizer. It was my soundtrack over the summer, and I couldn’t get enough. I forget how easily I obsess over my interests, because I find that I never have enough time to indulge in them. The only reason I was able to get so intensely into moisturizer was because it was easily accessible. It was available to me every time my engine turned over. Even for the ten minute drive from my house to work, I could be invested into this album. The commodification of labor and art has easily made the world so difficult to create and be creative in. Mainstream media has taken out the pure creativity required to make powerful art, and with music being a commodity, it takes away from the experience of immersing yourself in music, but I had this one moment that belonged only to me, cruising down the beachside highway with my windows rolled down. It was exactly what I pictured my summer would be. But I didn’t have time for anything else. I can count the times I saw my friends over the summer on one hand. I had to give up my free time so that I could pay for my responsibilities. I had to make enough for car insurance payments for the next year, which I did, but I missed the time I could’ve spent on my interests. In all honesty it really sucked, but I had to do it. Working is the future, which I hate, but it is required, no matter what. Music is therapeutic, and definitely helps me to not think too hard about that. I’m grateful that I had any time at all to indulge even a little bit over the summer.