wright && his mother`s paralysis .

I personally think that at this point, Wright being so young, it is kind of hard for him to understand what exactly is going on. He knows that his mother was close to dying because of her strokes. After the second stroke, she became paralyzed. His mother is the major role of his life at this time, being that his father left the family. His father was the source of the income in the house, their food came from the money his father made.

Wright seems scared of death. Not only because of the fact his mother was close to dieing, but because of the fact that when his mom gets sick, he has to go stay with his aunt and uncle. At his aunt and uncle’s house, he has to stay in the room, which a boy died. Right really wants to go home back to his mother when he finds this out, but there is not a lot that his mother can do for him if he were to go back home. His mother is not able to do the things she could do before the strokes. She is unable to physically discipline him, teach him, or just be a good mother to him since she is paralyzed.

I believe that Wright honestly does not know what exactly do to from here. Let alone dealing with his mother’s paralysis, he is still suffering from hunger, mental and physical hunger. His father left the family and now his mother has paralysis. I wonder what will happen next that affects the Wright greatly.

wright`s 'cultural heritage' && dislike of jews .

Wright’s cultural heritage was the major factor to his disliking of Jews. However, relating this to his own experiences is kind of tough. Religion was strongly forced in the home, mainly because of Wright’s Granny. She was really strong about religion in general, but she knows information about many religions and tells the information to Wright. Wright is basically told that the Jews are the ones who killed Jesus. Growing in the black community and knowing just what he was told in the community, Wright had no choice but to believe what he was told. It is not like he was getting information about religion and other cultures from people of other ethnic groups.

I believe that Wright understands that racism is not right, however, he believes that the Jews crucified Jesus. The bad thing about this is that Wright is taking this negative implication and holding it against all Jews. I truly do not think that ALL Jews should have to deal with his dislike just because of what he has been taught.

I am not exactly sure if I am actually answering this question like I am suppose to. I do know that racism was something that was not influenced in Wright’s home. I do not believe that his mother and Granny actually told him not to like Jews because of this, but because of the fact he was taught that the Jews killed Christ, it is kind of just an extinct and immediate reaction to the information. Due to this, Richard has an issue with being nice to the Jewish storekeeper.

wright`s hunger .

I believe Wright has two different types of hunger; he is experiencing mental hunger and physical hunger. It seems like his mental hunger consists of attention and stuff to do so he is not bored. He caused the house to burn just because he was bored and decided to see how the curtains would look with burned bottoms. He wants to be able to live this life in which he does not have to worry about going to hide under a burning house because he is so afraid of being beaten. He is hungry for this “happy” life that he has the idea of and the life that he lives is not the “happy” one. Wright is hungry for something to do, he wants to do something. Boredom is being a major factor in Wright’s life right now. Wright’s physical hunger is brought about because his father has left the family. His father was the one that was counted on for money, let alone to feed the family. There was hardly any money in the home when his father went away. Wright’s mother does not have a job, so there is no money coming from her way.

It seems like either way you chose to answer the question, you can be right. There are these two hungers that Wright really cannot do anything about. He knows that he cannot get any food without having money and he also knows he cannot get any money without the presence of his father in the house. Hunger is putting a negative impact on the way Wright acts.

is school really necessary ?

After reading Gatto’s “Against School” article, I have thought more about the fact that you do not actually HAVE to go to school to become some famous smart person. Gatto presents examples of famous historical figures like Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, and George Washington. These historical figures did not complete “full education” or go to public schools or attended college, they received a smaller type of education. School is not as necessaryas the society seems to make it be.

I strongly agree with the fact that many children suffer from boredom at school, and of course it does not help if the teachers are bored at the same time. I believe many teachers are not doing a job that they do not want to do, however, they are forced to teach certain lessons that they do not even find interest in themselves. Gatto mentioned that another reason the teachers are bored are because the students are bored and the students only really care about their grades. Students only care about their grades because they are forced by the American society to believe that they must have these high GPAs and test scores to be successful. I think many students do not learn the information taught in schools because they want to, they are forced into learning material and studying it for tests. I am not talking about all information learned, just the majority of it. I can personally say that there is more information that I study for a specific test than there is information that I am taught and remembered for a long time.

nonacademic education .

I certainly value the ‘nonacademic’ education I am receiving. I believe I endure the nonacademic education all the time without even noticing it. I do not think that I take the actual time to divide my academic foundings and my nonacademic knowledge intake. The value of this (nonacademic) education is beyond than what I am able to actually explain. I would label the information I intake from home, my parents, siblings, peers, etc. as nonacademic education. I think that any education that I do not particularly learn at school or in the educational environment is considered nonacademic. In addition, I even value my religious education that I even intake as a teenager. I am able to take in different lessons at church every church service that allow me to live my everyday life. The lessons allow me to cope with different situations. That is just particularly my view of it, although others may respectively have their very own opinions.

I believe that I learn a lot from the people around me. The different attitudes of people, their various personalities, and things like that are what I learn from the people around me. The people in my environment would fall into the nonacademic learnings, therefore I even value the people around me. Nonacademic education is something that allots to living day-to-day and learning from subjects in your surroundings.

day two of presentations .

Today was my first day being able to see presentations for the Rhetoric on the Town project. I thought it was pretty interesting that there are so many examples of rhetoric that we see everyday and we usually do not think that it is an actual example. The example that I found most interesting and one that I have thought about before was Ethan's and the cheeseburger.

Ethan presented the fact that you see these basically perfect looking cheeseburgers on billboards, commercials, and other advertising devices, however, it is not what the actual cheeseburger looks like when you buy it. I find this being so true. Fast food and other types of restaurants use these images that make the burger look so good, but in reality the burger is usually sloppy and the cheese is not even melted. The double cheeseburgers are even shown with the exact same size burger patties, but in reality they are not really the same size.

I believe Ethan was totally right about how they, meaning restaurants, make you think you are giving this such magnificent, "non- sloppy" burger. They try to make the burger look good so it is appealing to your eye and tummy, but when you actual go buy the burger it does not look like how it was advertised. I personally do not believe that if the companies put how the burger really looked, they would get so many people to buy their product. I think it is sad that you have to make something seem one way to get people to buy it, when it is really not how you are making or talking it up to be.

day one of presentations .

Since I was not here for the first day of presentations, below I have blogged about my response to the project in general and then other stuff.

For the project, Brittney and I went to Castleton Mall. We spent about two and a half hours seeking for rhetorical examples of advertising. We went in the afternoon and being a Monday, the mall was not so crowded, and therefore it was easier for me to take pictures of the examples that I saw. We walked around pretty much the whole mall and passed just about every store and looked at the different set ups and advertising signs outside each store. Each store has their own set up of course, but some stood out more than others as far as how they advertised to let alone get customers attention, but for them to buy stuff also. The stores that I thought had their more standing out way of advertising were; Helzberg Diamonds, The Disney Store, Hollister, Borders, and Victoria Secret. I also looked online and through clip art for different examples of rhetoric. I spent a lot of time online for this specific picture that I have once seen in a book but cannot remember the title of the exact book. The image was of two men standing side by side, one dressed in a nice suit with a professional significant look. The other man looked junky and vicious. You would think that the guy with the nice suit on was the good guy and the other guy was some criminal type guy that you should watch out for. However, there is an image on the next page that shows that the professional looking guy had a gun behind his back, while the other guy had a flower behind his back. I think the images help you realize that just because a person has this certain look and appears to dress like the average businessman or the average junky should not classify whom they actual are and what they actual do. I think it is pretty sad that people get classified just by how they are on the outside. This is something that happens everyday and we (as the majority of people in general) justify the type of person someone is just by his or her appearance.

ad presentations today .

So I did not get to see any presentations today since I was sick and came in late. I did not even get to see my own group’s presentation on video until today. After watching it, I really liked it. I am not saying that I enjoyed the video just because it was of my group, but because I think that it appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos.

I, along with the members of my group, knew that we had to come of with some product that would be pleasing to our classmates. We understood that our classmates are high school students just like us who are sleepy as heck when they come to class and with iBall they could look cool, stylish, “baller”, and sleep at the same time while appearing to be awake. Being tired high school students ourselves helped use appeal to pathos while presenting and coming up with our product.

Brittney’s funny sayings and gestures made me laugh. I thought that she put a big emphasis on the ethos in the video because she made people laugh and of course laughing has to do with emotion. The logos in the commercial was coming up with some type of statistic that could show some type of logic information. Another interesting part of the video was at the end when Maggie gave the information about where the products could be bought. I loved how she talked fast like real commercials do. She informed me that there was not even any speeding up in the dialogue, it was all her!

I would have loved to see the other commercials, however, I was not able to. Sucks! But hopefully, I can still see the commercials on video of the other products.

pottery barn .

I was not at all shocked by any of the information presented in the “Pottery Barn Style” article. The story presented in the beginning of the article about Hadley MacLean and her new six-foot-six-inch husband was not surprising to me either. I clearly understand that when middle to upper class people are in search for something they believe they are in need of, they are willing to pay the price no matter what it is. However, the thing about this particular story was that they got addicted to Pottery Barn just after buying one bed. They continued to go back to buy more stuff.

Their addiction allowed me to realize that Pottery Barn is doing what they want to do. Pottery Barn is getting customers to not only buy one item one time, but to have them keep coming back and buying more. I truly believe that these people are shamely more materialistic people. I also think that when you buy one thing so expensive from Pottery Barn, it makes you think that you are more part of the high end versus buying some furniture from Walmart. Another example of this would be buying coffee from Starbuck’s, versus just buying some coffee from the gas station. Many would argue that it just does not taste the same, however, I would have to disagree. I think many people go to Starbuck’s just because it is part of the middle to upper class life and people want to feel like they are part of the higher end of life.

But, I am not going to lie, I would love to see this $24 towel, once I get the chance to go to the mall. I would like to see if it is such a good product to be worth $24 or if I would be better off going to get a towel from target that is about $10.

environment of a store

The store that I love to shop at is Target. Target is like the best store to go to when you need anything, literally. I get most excited about Target’s clothes. Their clothing lines for juniors are the bomb!

Target carries a variety of brands in their stores, as far as their clothes. Not only are the clothes really cute, they are cheap. I think what keeps me going in Target for specifically their clothes are the fact that they always have sale racks not matter when you go in there and most of the time. Also, most of the time, these racks are pretty organized to be so popular. In addition, I usually get these ads in the mail that show these cute outfits being put together with Target’s clothes. The ads make me want to go in Target even more after getting hints to fashionable ideas. Overall, Target mainly gets me to love it so much because it has everything I need. It is bright, clean, has nice workers (from what I know of), and carries pretty darn stylish clothes. Being such a big neat store, sending the ads out every month, and having all the things you basically need in your house, influences me to keep going to target.

Other stores that I usually shop at are Forever 21 and Charlotte Russe. I believe a lot the times they put out these huge sale signs, but in reality it is not usually such a big sale or all the sale clothes are very ugly clothes that no one really wants. I like these stores a lot, but for some reason I fall into their sale signs a lot of the times just to see if they actually had something cute on the rack for one. I like Forever 21 and Charlotte Russe, but I am in love Target!

super bowl commercial ad

Tonight, while watching the Super Bowl, I came across some pretty weird commercials, not going to lie. I think the weirdest one was this Diet Pepsi Max commercial, but at the same time it was interesting. Even though the drink is Diet Pepsi, it has gensing in it, but still supposedly low calories.

The commercial starts out by all of these people in various types of settings not being able to basically function or do their work because they did not have any energy. The different settings were people working in an office, men on farms, men doing valet parking in front of a hotel, famous rappers in singers during an awards show, a guy at a bar, etc. They even had commentators acting like they were announcing news from the Super Bowl game, but could not stay awake. During the different settings in the beginning, no one could stay awake or perform any tasks because they were tired and did not have any energy. But after a lady came pass the office with a bunch of Diet Pepsi Max on a cart, the workers drank one and all started dancing and functioning better. So did all the other people at the other settings.

This commercial appealed to pathos, ethos, and even logos. It appealed to the emotion sense of the rhetorical triangle because it showed how everyone was down and could not function without this simple drink and then how there was happiness and excitement after the drink was drank. The logic was that it featured all the different type of settings and acknowledged that no one could not do anything without this Pepsi drink. The credibility was that it had rappers and famous music stars in the commercial that could not even stay wake at their own music awards, rather find out who the song of the year goes to. These stars included L.L. Cool J, Missy Elliot, Macy Gray, and Busta Rhymes. Everyone was bobble heads in the beginning, until they got the drink.

I also found the commercial online: http://video.msn.com/?mkt=en-us&brand=foxsports&vid=49aca8d6-4dba-485d-9f27-657448f8a47f