YAYYYYY BLAZERS

Yaay Blazers!
good luck at State

Katie
Ieysha
Maggie
Brittney


ps. class was no so perky without maggie.

superiority✓ self expression✓ original thought✓

Wright feels gratitude after writing because he just did something for himself. He is happy with the story he created out of his own mind. Because of this pride, he goes to share it with the neighbor girl, who doesn’t understand why he would write something for fun. She still can’t understand why, even after he explains that he just felt like writing.
He likes that he did something that was his. Not many other people, and really no one he knew wrote just for fun. He feels superior, and important for this.
Before the discussion of this in class, I thought that the main reason he felt so satisfied was because it was his own work. It wasn’t something that he had been told to do. He is told what to do throughout his entire life, and he finally did something just because he wanted to.
I guess this still could be part of the reason, but after the discussion I see that it was more for the feeling of superiority.

numb. unresponsive. proactive.

After Wright’s mother has been paralyzed, he goes in to talk to her. She tells him that she cannot bear the pain any longer, and wants to die. Richard says that he is now numb to reacting to his mother. He no longer has a reason to react to her. She gave into her problems, and Richard does not want to do this.
Richard has a hard life, full of racial prejudice and religious pressures. He does not want to give into them, and just do what he is supposed to do. He will not just give in to the idea that as a black boy he is supposed to be poor and not amount to anything. He continues to try to find work so that he is not hungry. He works to fill both the hunger and the Hunger. Working fills the Hunger because now he has something to do with himself. He isn’t following the rules of his aunt or Granny.
Religiously, Richard says that while sitting in church, he is emotionally attracted to religion and God, but that it does not make sense to him, and he cannot believe in it. He wants to believe in it because it would give him hope, but he knows he cannot because of his life and the world around him. There is nothing good in his life to prove that there is this higher power. There is no evidence, therefore, he can’t believe in the religion that his grandma so desperately wants him to.

i hate you. why?. just because

He says it was his cultural heritage to dislike Jews because he and all of his peers were taught that Jews were ‘Christ killers.’ He was not so much directly taught to berate them, just that they were bad. He and his friends then kept taunting Jews, because they were supposed to. They were supposed to hate them and make them feel badly, because they were bad people, according to how they were raised.
This also relates to his hatred of inequality with white people. White boys always taunt Richard and his friends because they are black. Berating Jews was a way to make sure that someone was beneath them. If they couldn’t be as good as white people, they were going to make sure they were better than Jews. Socially and as a human, you want to be better than some other group. No one wants to be at the bottom socially.
The reason that disliking Jews was his ‘cultural heritage’ rather than just something he was taught is that he was never told to hate them, he just knew. It was almost instinctual to want to be better than them, and to make sure it happened by publicly showing disapproval of them.

yum. yum. eat 'em up.

Hunger. Well, Richard is hungry because his family cannot afford enough food since his dad has left them. Before he can make this connection, he is just always hungry. Once his mother helps him make the connection between hunger and his father leaving, he is Hungry. The hunger that he has now, the Hunger, is not so much for food. Of course he is hungry for food, but he is Hungry to fill the gap in his life because the hunger reminds him of his father, which reminds him of hate.
When his father offers him the nickel, his hunger makes him want to take it, but his Hunger makes him be able to say no. He knows that by accepting this nickel he is allowing his father to believe it was okay to leave the family and not support them financially. The nickel is only a temporary fix. He does not want his father to get away with that. Adult Richard says he knows that the next time he sees his father he will be a poor sharecropper, and then knows that his father’s lack of support comes back to haunt him, and does not get away with it.
Richard’s hunger starts to fade even though he is still physically hungry, because his Hunger, Hunger for anything, grows so much his hungry isn’t so substantial anymore.

boo school.

I think that a reason that we go to school is to learn things that the immediate people around us do not know. The other main reason is to gain new ideas and insight into issues that happen in everyday life. We need to learn to talk to other people and learn how to express our ideas so that others can comprehend it. We also need to learn how to receive new thoughts and perspectives and process them to be able to reject, accept or incorporate them into our own ideas, values and way of life.
We can find these things in other places, but it takes a person who wants to learn to find it. If everyone would go out and seek the information and knowledge they needed, school would not be mandatory. But, people do not do this. All people are not driven to find answers to questions they do not know. Because of this, we need school to make people learn.
I don’t think it should be abolished or anything, but I think that a school that taught all basic skills and taught everything it already does should be offered. A place where people can go to seek that information they needed, but not be mandatory. That way, people who are driven could go as much as they wanted and those who are not driven could go as little as possible. Now that I think about it, that’s a good way to continue natural selection. But, on the other hand, then there aren’t un-driven people to flip our burgers. BUT if there weren’t un-driven people, then flipping burgers would no longer be a remedial job.
HA. I think I just won.

honestly, who really cares about 'x'?

I do enjoy the nonacademic learning part of my education. I think that talking and sharing ideas is the best part about learning something new. I think when a new idea is presented, you can get a better perspective of it if you talk it out. You also learn more when you learn how other people think. If you only think one way for your entire life things would be pretty boring, and you would never develop viewpoints of your own. You will just regurgitate the information that was thrown at you in school or in life in general. If you don’t learn different ways to think, you will take everything at face value and not look into what they are really saying. You would buy things because they said they were the best, and not compare them to others.
Of course there are other parts to noneducational learning, but thinking is my favorite. I love new ideas and new thoughts. I like to defend my own ideas and challenge others. I like to hear others viewpoints and then maybe change mine if theirs make sense to me.
Other nonacademic education is important, but I think they all can fall under the category of ideas and thoughts. There are thoughts about religion and politics, as well as things like the meaning of life, and rhetoric strategies in advertising.
Although I like the academic part of education as well, I don’t think it would be as effective without the discussion and the sharing of ideas as well as learning to convey ideas effectively and converse in an educated manner.

around the town? pshh off the internet

Today I thought that everyone’s presentations were pretty different in a good way. I think its pretty cool that all of us found very different things to find rhetoric in. People used a variety of different stores, and things they really did find around town. I think the pictures that people actually took were more interesting, but some of the ones found offline were cool. Adds found online are usually really cool because you can search for exactly what you want, but when you find them in your life its pretty cool.
I do think that Alex’s (D) (R) rhetoric was really cool because he tied it back to his IC project. I hadn’t ever really thought about labeling people on the news as a rhetoric device. I just think of it as saying what they are. They are already labeling themselves because they declare what party they are, but I guess putting it in writing is different that just saying it.

LINES ARE EVERYYYYWHERE

Christina Lee’s Rhetoric on the Town presentation started out with a joke about lines as rhetoric. I was laughing hysterically because I knew she was going to do this before it happened, but later she and I talked about lines a little more. Lines really are rhetoric. Fences are lines that mean keep out, there are there to create a barrier. Lines in a parking lot keep cars in a line and in order. Lines keep things orderly. Lines really are everywhere. Now I don’t think all of them can be defined rhetorically, but a lot of them can. She also took some pictures of Valentine’s Day coupons. There was a set ‘for him’ and a set ‘for her.’ If you look at her picture you can see that the ones ‘for him’ were almost gone while the ones ’for her’ were in abundance. I think this shows that women are more likely to buy something like that and not be embarrassed by it, or to be attracted to a table full of things like that, filled with pink. The book store knew its audience and used their displays well.

kendal, kendal. funniest thing of my life

Today in class (aka yesterday considering I’m writing this a day late) we watched all six presentations, and let me tell you, most of them were hilarious. I think almost all of them used a form of humor to get the audience’s attention. Interesting… at least I think so. I thought that doing the commercial in person might dull the connection to the audience. It did not however. I thought that the two commercials done in person were just as effective as the ones that were filmed. Nick Martin’s group used humor when he and Liz were in the truck, saying how it sucked and then were in awe over the ‘Sparrow.’ Kendal’s group used humor with the 80’s Breakfast Club theme. I personally thought that was a unique idea because a lot of kids our age have seen that movie, or can at least relate to the stereotypes. Ethan’s group used the tag line, ‘It makes you do whatever you do, better,’ or something like that, which was funny. Maggie’s group had Brittney as their spokes person being loud and infomercial-ish, while Maggie was ‘asleep.’ Alex’s group also used humor with their ‘Or even if you are just Allie Cunningham and need water to survive.’ I think this shows that humor is an easy and effective form of rhetoric.

just like when i was little, but now it costs me $1,000

The Pottery Barn Style article was really interesting because I don’t think about the actual products being a part of rhetoric. I usually think about the décor and the atmosphere of the actual store as rhetoric. The way a magazine is set up helps sell the product. I guess I never thought about how stores sell the same genres of things to get people to buy the products. Stores sell a style of products to get a certain kind of people to get interested and keep coming back. Pottery Barn does sell new items that feel like old items, that are more expensive than if you were to buy them somewhere else, but they are well made, which keeps customers coming back for more. Also because they sell the same kinds of things, people come back because it’s ‘their style’ or they want something to match what they just bought. The article talked some about customer service, which I also think is a big part of rhetoric. The way you handle your customers reflects in your sales, and keeps people coming back.

low prices without locking employees in at night

Well, when I started thinking about this topic, my first thought was Target. You have no idea how much time and money I spend there. Then I thought that it would be difficult because it doesn’t really set up a mood for the store as obviously as other stores, like Hollister with its blaring music and surf board display. Then I started to think more about Target’s atmosphere. It sets itself up to be a clean and organized environment with its white walls and floors. It’s separated into sections for easy finding. They try to give you the best quality for your money. And you can find basically anything you want in it. I think the reason that Target is appealing is because it is a ‘one stop shop,’ especially a Super Target. You can go in and get food, clothes, CDs, movies, and some footy pajamas for your best friend’s birthday in one place. You don’t have to spend so much time driving to all these other places. It probably also helps that I haven’t ever had a negative experience there. If I would have had something bad happen or something go wrong, then I might not feel the same way about it as I do now. Essentially, what I am saying is, Target is almost as tight as LaMags.

jinx you owe me a coke

The first commercial that saw and knew that I had to write about was the Etrade commercial with the talking baby. It has a baby sitting at a computer talking at the screen like it’s a webcam and you are on the other end. The baby explains how he is making all of this money and investing in stocks, because he never could before Etrade. He says, if he can do it, being a baby, anyone can. And then, the baby throws up. First you are staring at the baby because you think, ‘Wait. Babies don’t talk.’ And then it throws up. You aren’t expecting that. The commercial uses the shock value that makes you think again. When you have to think again, you are more likely to remember what the product is.

The second commercial that I saw was probably my favorite. Granted I didn’t watch too many, because I don’t usually watch entire football games. Not even the Superbowl. Nevertheless, as I was switching back and forth from Iron Chef to the Superbowl commercials I saw the Coke ad that starts with James Carville and Bill Frist, a Democrat and a Republican, arguing over an issue when they both say the same word at the same time. Frist says, “Jinx, you owe me a coke.” They head outside to settle the debt. They set aside their differences and ‘bond’ over Coke, as if to say, Coke can fix anything. It can even bring together a Democrat and a Republican.
I just thought that this ad was very clever because they used known people from each party, to get the ‘celebrity’ appeal. You then also know that they are both hardcore leaders. Plus it doesn’t hurt that this is an election year. But I’m sure that wasn’t a coincidence.