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Hi there, welcome back to Apotize.com, today’s article will be a vlog instead. Tattoos used to be a huge “controversial” topic, sometimes taboo, but recently have become a modern styling way, which I definitely do not agree with. Get your tattoos, be very careful of dirty needles, and take good care of the tattoo spot until it heals. Pick your tattoo after spending weeks analyzing the design and imagining having that on you for the rest of your life. Tattoo removals are very expensive and not accurate, so might as well have a good choice rather than getting one done fast. Don’t rush it. If you don’t like a designer’s design, don’t feel ashamed or scared to ask to change it. The tattoo will be on you for the rest of your life.

Oh, and from personal experience, tattoos are addicting. Believe it or not.

Enjoy =)

Much love,

Apo Avedissian

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Why do I blog? Because you’re reading. Welcome back to Apotize.com, back to an “Uncategorized” article.

What is Apotize? Apotizing is the act of change towards civilization. No I’m just kidding, I just like to talk a lot. And change society. And teach psychology. And, yeah, I just like to talk a lot.

I actually wrote this article to thank you, all readers, for all of the comments, “likes” and link-sharings. Knowing there are readers is enough of a reason for me to keep writing. I recently made a facebook fan page for Apotize.com, so please check that out =)
I’ve been getting thousands of page views every night I post an article, and it keeps getting higher and higher, so I just wanted to thank who ever has been telling friends, or sharing my links on your facebooks or websites. So, thank you for that. If you’d like to support a little more, you may even suggest 35 friends at a time on facebook. “Suggest to Friends” right under the picture in the fan page, and select 35 people at a time, and suggest them. If you do more than 35 people, chances are it will not go through but tell you it did. You have to do 35, send, then go back and do another 35 (if you wish). Thank you thank you thank you =)

Apotize Your World

Promote Your Page Too

Dear high school students,
Freshies, sophomores, and juniors generally, seniors specifically,
I have a word I need to share with you.

I used to be the kid that planned his next project out with details to the point of perfectionism. I sat down during lunch and wrote down my ideas, and the next day I made the ideas more specific, then got into details, and sooner than later, I realized the year was over, and I had done nothing in that school but plan projects. During my senior year, I decided to work on all of these projects, and put them together. I did. I built a fan base of 35,000 myspace fan list. With that being said, I got two directors (Hollywood) to work with. [Names cannot be mentioned due to legal papers insisting so]. The last two lines were not brought up for bragging, for if it was, I would’ve told you a long time ago already. I want you to know how big one can be without the need to be working under somebody or the feel to be signed under a specific record label for all these musicians out there looking to get signed.

During my senior year, I became active in the Art Academy I was referred to by my Photography teacher, Ms. Alison Stewart. I joined the Art Academy during the last two months of my senior year, and through out the work I put in, I gathered two different $500 awards and a medal for outstanding achievements.

The point here is that you need to get your act together before you look into all of these companies you want to work with, or the classes you want to take in college. I want you to take all of these alternative classes and join these clubs. You might find your real passion. Not everyone is great at what they do, but some people turn out to be amazing because of loving that path they’ve taken.

If you enjoy taking care of the sick, then go ahead and major in any medical related field. You’ll enjoy life. However, if you be a doctor because dad or mom wanted you to, there’s a problem. Dad and mom will destroy your future life without knowing it. If you want to become an artist, do your thing. Realize that you need your connections around you. A degree will take you no where if you don’t have skill nor determination. Yes, both at the same time. Find your passion and stick to it. People have made millions off of selling the most little, stupid ideas I’ve ever heard of, but hey, with enough passion, they make more than you and I and our families make, combined.

Take an early step. Do your work but stay social. You need your people. Don’t get signed too early. Don’t get hooked to a company too early. Start your own path and if someone decides to pick you up, that’s when you know you made it for your self not for impressing anybody else.

Enjoy life, and let your self enjoy it as well. Your brain needs its fun too, not only your body.
Go do your fun projects and make money while you’re at it. You’re gonna be bigger than ever, independently.

Go join these groups, have a fun class in your schedule, and aim towards success. It’s never too early. Never too early.

Apo Avedissian

Media kills. Easy and simple. Michael Jackson. Who made him ? Who took him down ?
A lot of arguments can go on debating whether Michael Jackson did sleep with a kid, but were there any evidence ? No.
Nothing was proven, and the man was played around with like he was a toy. He was ridiculed. His “masked” pictures covering every newspaper’s main pages calling him “whacko”, when a few years before the same newspaper would buy Michael Jackson’s worn sock, and what happens after he dies (gets killed, COUGH), people like him again. Oh, beautiful media.

As we talked about the Roman Theater in our Theater Arts class today, the professor described how the Romans had actual death scenes occur on stage. An actor, literally dying in front of you. Let’s not forget now, these people were great architects and thinkers, so, no, they were not in the stone age. A civilized nation used prisoners in plays and killed them in front of 17,000-30,000 viewers just because the play told the story of a character that dies throughout the whole script. The professor compared it to UFC today. How ironic, isn’t it ?

I left my Theater Arts class and headed to my History class. The History professor, now, talked about how ‘distorted’ our reality is. He talked about youtube having Kennedy’s live death video uploaded. He talked about Saddam Hussain’s execution video getting millions of views and how distorting that is. After all of this, he said “we might even have a “Death Penalty Pay Per View” program going on soon, jokingly.

I didn’t take that as a joke. I know it’ll happen very soon considering the amount of violence on TV already. People pay to see two able bodied men slam each other until one of them suffers a concussion. Does that ring a bell ? Definitely. Boxing, UFC, Martial Arts, you name it.
Media continues to add crap and distort our lives. If a show doesn’t have cops and drugs involved, nobody would watch them these days. Ask anybody what nationality Kim Kardashian is however, and watch the same answer pouring from all 4 sides.

I never found any song better describing media than this: Coldplay – Lost (ft. Jay Z).
Jay Z describes what ever I wrote up there in his way. I love it, and thought I should share it with you.
“With the same sword they knight you, they gon’ good night you with
Shit, that’s only half if they like you
That ain’t even the half what they might do
Don’t believe me? ask Michael
See Martin, see Malcolm
See Biggie, see Pac, see success and its outcome
See Jesus, see Judas
See Caesar, see Brutus, see success is like suicide
Suicide, it’s a suicide
If you succeed, prepare to be crucified
Media meddles, ni**as sue you, you settle
Every step you take, they remind you you’re ghetto
So it’s tough being Bobby Brown
To be Bobby then, you have to be Bobby now
And the question is, “Is to have had and lost
Better than not having at all?”
Because I’m…Lost.”
Jay Z

Ladies and gentlemen,

We now have some left-over invitations for Google Wave accounts. If you’re interested, drop a comment below this article with your gmail email address please. For example, the email:

apoavedissian @ gmail . com

should be written as

apoavedissian [at] gmail [dot] com

Just so search engines don’t get your email address. Spammers x_O

Okay, have fun and early Merry Christmas everybody. FREE GOOGLE WAVE ACCOUNT GIVEAWAYS.

Just another day of school finished, and it was time for my friends and I to go grab a lahmajeen (lahmajoon) from the store two blocks down from our school which made them. We all paid and got our “pizzas”. I walked down to grab the lemonade to add on my lahmajeen, and the symphony of the AK47s started. I knew it wasn’t very close to us, around 200 meters away, but the people’s words made us worry. I was in the seventh grade, and being that old, or young in a situation like that, it is very hard to concentrate on things that happen around you. First thing that happens is your body becomes a statue as you start thinking and wondering what had happened and what will happen next. The older men ran outside to see what happened, and we stood in the restaurant to watch through the dirty windows.

Three pick-up trucks passed by, full with militias who opened fire on all of the restaurants and stores around the block. I always thought that a moment like that would take forever to finish; I was wrong. The drive-by felt so fast that we all fell down, heard the shots followed by silence with the truck noises only coming after seconds. “Drive-by !” somebody yelled after around a minute of the shooting, while bleeding to death on the floor. Awkward, I thought. I’ve always believed that people show you their real selves when they’re put in a “live or die” situation,

It was a beautiful sunny day when we first walked in “the field” in Baghdad. It was a hot day, around 58 c’ degrees outside. The kids brought a soccer ball as the groups started cussing at each other before we played the “championship” match. The field was a huge soccer field project that took around 6 years to build due to financial problems. We, the kids of that neighborhood, used to make a soccer league and play in the street. My team made it to the finals, and since we won the champion ship, we got to play in “the field” whenever we wanted, and little by little it became a place we would hang out at every day.
As the war began, we weren’t allowed to leave our houses. I remember going up on the roof and jumping the walls that separate the roofs of others to get to a friend’s house, until one day a laser beam was pointed straight at my eye and two soldiers on top of a tank around a quarter mile away pointed at me to walk down. That was the last time I was on the roof.

Our next league never started. After almost a year of war, everyone was used to the shootings and bombings already, and we believed that if God gave you a life, he’d choose whether you get shot or survive. It never went by luck. It was faith. I remember the first time we got to see the field after many months of not even taking a look at it from outside. The fences were gone, the grass was no longer green, and the walls of the buildings around it were no longer the clean white buildings. Everything became brown or black. There were no older people playing backgammon on the side and eating seeds. There were no longer women hanging clothes on their balconies in the surrounding buildings. The field became empty, silent, and a smelly place. I didn’t even feel like walking on that field as it no longer was the field it used to be. Dead street dogs were lying around with bunch of flies flying over them. Empty bullet and rocket caps lay scattered on the ground. Later on the field became a small base for the American troops,

Getting a bachelor’s or a master’s degree in Iraq doesn’t exclude you from selling cigarettes or vegetables on the street. There’s absolutely no value for education over there, you need connections rather; in fact, the only reason a person might get a degree is to keep his/her family’s name high. I grew up in a family which had goals and strict rules about education, which made me want to study even more at times. My Arabic teacher told me once that he was very proud of me and he expected me to become an inventor once I get older, and he also said he could swear his life on it. He always told me to read books, whether fiction or not, whether a story or a how-to manual; he always asked me to read more and more.

During my eighth grade, many problems occurred which caused all of our school to be closed down for many months.

On a Monday morning, as we were heading to class from the concrete field, I heard people shouting and a group of people ran out of the building next to us. Just another man trying to shoot someone, we thought. The principal ran all the way to our fields and told us to not leave the campus and to stay away from the school buildings. We were a group of seven guys, and just like any other kids who take things for granted, we decided to find out what was going on. I remember a friend of mine and I picked up our backpacks and started running after the other guys who ran before us. For a moment, I couldn’t see anything, I remember seeing a white flash that stayed on for a millisecond and a huge pressure threw me back. I was laying on the ground. All my body felt sore. I opened my eyes while on the ground, facing up; I was still conscious. I looked around and saw nothing but smoke and fire coming out of the school building. I felt someone dragging me from my leg away from the building, and I remember trying to stand up on my own. I got up and my friend who ran late with me was still on the ground bleeding, and I noticed he was still breathing. I yelled at many people to call an ambulance, which the responds I got were “They don’t have enough cars and they’re all working”. I noticed that my leg was bleeding after several minutes, and didn’t feel a thing still. For a second I thought I was hit, but it was just the wound of me being thrown on the concrete ground. An old lady offered her head scarf to wrap my leg with,