Claire's blog for Eng 201

I'd say my overall reflection on blogs is a positive one.
One reason blogs are nice is because you can read all the other students blogs whenever you want. And it's optional for the most part, so you don't have to sit through class and listen to an assignment someone wrote that they didn't really care about or work on for longer than 20 seconds. You can go through the ones and figure out the interesting one and read it, maybe even share it with a friend if its funny enough. It also allows more time for the students to do more writing outside of class rather than inside class and more reflecting on the writing inside of class or other discussions.
Another reason blogs are nice is because there is a feeling more freedom in what you write. I took a creative writing class once, and it is similar to that. You get a chance to write what you want and what works for you and it generally is easy and fun to do. That is pretty obvious considering so many people currently have their own online blog that they post to daily. I see some new parents put up blogs about their new children for teh grandparents to look at even. It's an easy way to tell stories abotu whats going on in your life to multiple friends at once.
I used to have my own livejournal. I stopped posting on it because I realized I only wanted to write on it when I was sad, and then when I got a boyfreind I never wantedto write on it anymore at all. No wonder livejournals are so stereotyped to be very emo. I don't us a blog anymore for social reasons, but I enjoy using it for a classroom.

My Visual Arguement is the advertisements for Toppers Pizza. Now I've never had Toppers Pizza before but I have to say that my roommate and I really do enjoy them becuase they are sweet looking posters. They send them to us in the mail for free and so we decorate our room with them when we get a chance. This way Topper's is doing really well by advertising through us, because now anyone who comes in our room gets to see the advertisements on the posters and then they crave Toppers(hopefully for the advertisers), or at least pizza of some kind.
The best thing about this little posters of advertisement is that the word "Toppers" doesn't take up half of the poster. In fact its fairly small compared to everythign else on the poster. It has on it instead the cute little characters (Kinda like what cereal boxes use) to do the advertisements for them in representing toppers.It also uses words in the arguement, and since one of the characters is named "Hunger" he is mentioned quite often. So they are trying to connect Toppers to their peoples hunger. Each time the poster also comes with a little story on the back to explain what is going on with the characters. The characters seem to fit extremely well into the Emo crowd, which is popular with many teenagers (As is pizza) so this is probably their target audience for the advertisement, and overall I think they do a pretty good job with it.

The issue of crop circles is highly debatable and in some cases quite comical. When I heard we got to do a blog on a radical issue the first thing that came to my mind was crop circles because I watched an episode on it on TV once and they talked about a group of people making a religion out of it. This is the first blog I found on crop circles:
http://www.cropcirclenews.com/modules/news/

"The source and the meaning of crop circles are mysteries. Perhaps they come from extraterrestrials, or from another dimension, or from the future."
The first thing that struck me about this introduction was that the writer introduced three different explanations. Now normally, giving multiple explanations seems smart because you would admit that you arn't sure what the explanation is and it gives the audience to choose their favorite choice. However, this writer gives three all radical sci-fi explanations.
I have definately heard before that these crop circles supposidly came from extraterrestrials, but now we arn't so sure about that because there is no evidence. So if its not that, then it has to be either something from another dimension, or from the future. Especially considering there has never been any evidence to humans doing this themselves for any artistic, educational, or joking reasons. Right?
So basically, this would have started out much better if the writer had also offered the option of the crop circles being created just by people.

As I continued in the introduction of the blog, the writer was explaining how fascinating the crop circles were. Although I will admit some designs are pretty complicated and cool, I was completely confused by this statement:
"-- since we never have identified anything other than ourselves with the capacity to design and to move matter,"
Hmmm, I'm pretty sure every bird, mammal and bug I know can move matter. Ants build ant hills, beavers build dams, and bees have some sweet honey combs.

The writer also states :
"we will not know where the circles come from until their source identifies itself to us."
Once again, it has been proved that men can do this within the night, and plenty have.

Luckily though, this person is so nice and invites everyone to join, whether they believe in it or not.
" We invite you to join in as we look to see into this awesome phenomenon. Do send us what information you have or you come across that will expand our database, and please chime in with your opinions, theories, beliefs and arguments. "
Because of this one blogger posted a sweeet addition to the crop circles on SAND Circles. How fun, now these things are supposed to be created by fairies, not aliens. This is believable to me!
" This is when you'll see them, round barren patches devoid of plants and rocks.
Perfectly circular and mostly equidistant, they pockmark the landscape like Leopard's spots."
Another theory is that this is caused by DRAGONS.
THis actually makes sense becuase the patches are barren as if it was all BURNT AWAY!!!

"I've heard everything from landing locations for flying saucers, impact points for broken-up meteorites, tribal dancing spots and fossilised termite mounds."
After reading this interesting article I have a feeling this blog should just shut down and start over as a Sand Circles blog. The Sand circles is much more interesting and I was more easily persuaded.

# posted by claire @ 6:09 PM 0 comments

I decided to write my blog about running becuase I really care a lot about it. But that was on Sunday. Today I didn't go running, so I'm just going to talk about my day today becuase I feel like i've had the laziest day ever, but my brain is dying and I just want to sleep. Maybe through listing how my day has gone today I can discover what has gone differently and why I have no sense of motivation. Please excuse me if I give unneccessary or Emo information. I used to have a livejournal so I'm probably stuck in that phase of "journaling".
So I woke up earlier than ussualy this morning to meet with my Advisor and hour before my first class. I've never met my advisor before so I was pretty curious as to how this would go. So I got there around 8:35. I tell the lady outside of his office that I wanted to see him but I didn't make an appointment so she sends me into a little waiting room which made me feel like I was in a dentists office. While I'm waiting I fall asleep. I realize once she starts moving around I should wake up in case he came in there with me asleep becuase that would be extremely embarrasing. Soon after I wake up I notice she is finally telling him that I am there even though he had been off the phone for a good 15 minutes now. The reason I went to go see my advisor was to talk to him about being pre-vet. I decided thats something that I really care about and I would be happy to go to school for another 4 years for it. I also really don't like my job right now so I liked the idea of switching my job to help out my career goals. The lady tells me I can see him now and for some reason I feel like i'm still asleep when I get into his office, so I probably had this extremely awkward expression on my face from me trying to pretend like I wasn't just asleep and that I know what I am there for. The situation became even moreawkard when I realized he decided to always want to talk when I was talking, so I couldn't never tell him what I wanted to say. He also laughed at me for being worried about not having enough vet experience, so I felt really dumb. I assumed that most pre-vet students knew they wanted to be so even before they got into college. I don't think he wanted to talk to me at all this morning.
Since he recommended that I try to get an interview from the Animal Health services they advertised in the email, I went to the Ag. Hall building immediately after I was done talking to my advisor. I was pretty excited that it worked out so perfectly that it just happened to be inbetween the Biochemistry building and the building my Ag Econ lecture was in. (yes my life is that exciting). I went into the main office and this lady helped me sooo much it was awesome but I was pretty disapointed to find out that to apply for this job I had to sign up on this webpage that cost 15 dollars. Grosssss.
So I went to my AAE lecture, and it was a review session, so for once we get to ask questions without him getting pissed at us for interupting the lecture. The negative is that we can only phrase the question in such a way as to where we wont make fun of us. But don't worry, he really is a nice guy outside of lecture. My study group and I went together to visit him last wednesday morning before Eng(this class) and he couldn't stop asking us nice questions-but thats completely besides the point. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I only have that one class. Which would be extremely nice if I didn't have to go straight to work for 5 hours afterwards. Plus, as I mentioned earlier I don't really like my job that much(I'd rather be studying).
Today was very interesting though becuase I basically told them since I talked to my advisor and he suggested I get a new job that is more pre-vet "based" that I need to look for a new job. And once I find a new job I will leave that one. So, basically I'm quitting in who knows how many days. Now some people would think- Why would you tell them that? I thought it was polite to give them a heads up on the fact that I would be leaving. Also, it gave me an out to learning new stuff that I did not like and was extremely bad at becuase I was new to it. So today was nice becuase I got to sort carrots and throw away old moldy ones and I wasn't under pressure of messing up Mehtaps 20 hours of work.
I kinda excused myself early from work becuase my boyfreind had to work on a film for his class and he wanted me to play the lead role. I really wasn't at all excited to work on it with him becuase that meant me sitting out in the cold windy day trying to fake frowns when I can't help but smile, and skip like i'm happy even though i'm frozen stiff. But, I really wanted to help him with it becuase I don't think either of us knew someone else who would be willing and able to do that instead. The storyline was pretty cute. I had a Kit-Kat bar and I was extremely happy ot have it. Then along the way I lose it out of my sweat shirt pocket. I go around looking for it and along the way I find 2 empty kit kat bar wrappers. (what are the odds) By then I was pretty upset until I realized my kit kat bar was right next to where I sat down to pout. Over all it ended up good for me becuase I got free candy and a warm dinnner afterward from sitting out in the cold and missing my cross-country practice.
Then this evening I had a review session for Biology and it was completely useless and a waist of everyones time so I left early. Now I think i'm motivated again becuase I realized what I need to work on, when before I was just confused as to what I should work on.
sorry this is so boring,and there is no point to my whole day-telling experience.

When I think of a discourse community, I think of someone acting like they are becoming the stereotype of a group that they don't belong to. One example that comes to my mind is when Stewey from Family guy acts like he is a teenage boy. He does this when his parents give him a babysitter. Stewey acts like he is a teenage boy by being attracted to the babysitter and flirting with her even though he is a little toddler.
In all discourse communities I feel like one group is making fun of another group. In many cases it could be seen as insulting but the comedians are doing it for the purpose of comedy or laughter... not necessarily meaning to directly offend the ones they are making fun of. In many cases they do or did belong to the community they are making fun of it so it proves that its all in good measures. Most of the times when i watch jokes about discourse communities I really don't even think they are funny unless if I see myself in the discourse community.
Another example of a discourse community I used to see myself in is a young middle school girl. I have heard many jokes about middle school girls and laughed at them. I didn't realize how much of an immature girl I was when I was in middle school, until I read my journal that I kept from that time.

I tend to have these random nervous breakdowns when I realize how much work I have to do followed by feeling like I'm fine and can take time to relax, repeatedly throughout the week. So the other day I was walking out of good ol' Gordon commons with my friend and we had just gotten ice cream. It was very rainy and chilly that day and I hate being cold so it probably wasn't the best time to get ice cream. But we decided if we went back to our rooms and could get covered in blankets or something we could stay warm enough to eat our ice cream. I was also currently transitioning into the nervous breakdown phase. As we are walking out we see this guy standing outside in the rain hollaring. Now normally I am very afraid of people who try to get you to do stuff and I avoid them , but for some reason I didn't this time for this guy. Later I understood where I got my fear from.
This guy as it turns out was running for sometype of political campaigne. I found out that day it was called the Primary, I never knew what that was. I'm sure you will all find out soon enough I hate politics, and I don't care about any of it whatso-ever... which is probably bad, but to me it's all about arguing (which is my opinion is a disgusting waist of time). This guy of course stops me and my friend and starts telling us about why we should vote for him. To me his argument was pretty pathetic. He said that we needed to vote for him becuase that would make all the people in the "Big House" afraid of us (meaning the students) or something. We needed them to be afraid of us becuase they were planning on raising our tuition. And once he was done explaining thats why we needed to vote he would point to his name tag, hinting that we should vote for him. Now I think he was trying to use logos (logical appeal) by saying they should be afraid of us, but it really didn't make any sense to me. He was trying to use some type of emotional appeal both with the tuition raising so it would make all the students concerned and by telling us that he had been standing out in the rain all day trying to get people to vote.
So these are my mental objections to his argument: 1) If you all remember correctly I'm a pretty small girl and the last goal on my agenda is to intimidate people, especially important men in business suits. 2) My Econ teacher basically told us they were going to raise the tuition sometime soon anyway and there really isn't anything we can do about it. 3) He never said he would do anything to make sure tuition isn't raised anyway. 4) I was cold and freaking out because I had a lot of work to do.
After all these objections came up in my head and looking to my freind and realizing that he too was not enjoying this speach. I decided to ask the man to make sure I heard correctly. "Did you say you would make sure the tuition isn't raised?" Not surprisingly he said "No , thats not what I said at all" And he repeated his speach. After having to repeat what he told us before my freind and I could clearly see how angry he was getting at us because he was impatient and we weren't going and voting right away. Like I said I hate arguing and angry people, so I shrugged my shoulders and led my freind downstairs to the voting area. Luckily for us we didn't have our drivers liscences so we couldn't do it anyway. Looks like his persuasion wasn't strong enough to get us to return to vote later.

My favorite metaphor for writing is spilling your soul. There isn't much to explain about it becuase it's a pretty simple concept. A good visual to go along with it is someone writing down their ideas on paper but the words are coming from their heart, not the pencil or the brain. Perhaps in class you would feel like you're using your brain in writing it, but if it's something you're interested in or opposed to you will be able to spill more emotion into it, thus using your heart. Just like how writing can go on forever, the souls of people and their stories can go on forever too.
Spilling your soul works for both essays and stories. In essays you want to prove or argue a point and in order to make it seem realistic you have to be passionate about it and put your soul into it. If it ends up being boring, then there isn't enough life in the essay. Some people hate writing essays and it's probably they can't always allow themselves to put their soul into it or they don't care much about correct grammer so it spills through and affects their grade.
Writers spill their souls and share it with others. In stories people spill their souls by writing about something that relates to their own life, or how they with their life could be, or any story that just holds a lot of emotion to them.
Spilling your soul as a metaphor for writing just seems to work best because it's so broad and can fit in so much into it.

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