Ritualistic Writing

Writing has always tested my patience. I can stare at a sentence for ten minutes, imagining tons of ways to reorder the words or play with commas. Then decide, nahh, and throw out the entire sentence. Not only is this inefficient, it's frustrating! So I've developed a step by step process this past week to get in the mood for my rhetorical analysis.

     1. Go for a run. I would need to just get out of the house, and start getting in the writing mindset. Completely let your mind wander on the subject.
     2. Take a shower. Who wants to write as a sweaty mess? Not this guy. I like to think the water spewing from my shower head is symbolically washing all my bad ideas away. Then I get frustrated that I would think of something so sappy.
     3. Eat some food. Don't munch while you write though, zoning out in front of a bag of chips is the last thing the author of my article would want. But I definitely can't think creatively on an empty stomach.
    
 By now, I'm exhausted. I'm so slap happy, that I'll write anything that comes to my head. I won't fuss over a sentence into the late hours of the night, I"ll just write. Then sleep. Then the next morning/afternoon, I can revise the simple grammar mistakes and elaborate more on the big picture when I can think logically. It seemed to work great! I never lost it and went into panic mode... which is quite the success. 

Pump It Up.

Whenever I'm at work I can't get this song out of my head. It's not to the point where I'm singing it yet, but I often end up humming it when I'm alone. Yeah, it's sad.

Since August, I've been working at Pump It Up at Highway 55 and County Road 24. I think it's a perfect fit because I love working with kids, and it's a blast. I get to jump around, listen to music, and it's pretty good pay too. The best part is I have yet to play with a kid who isn't ecstatic to be there. I'm usually watching parties of  seven-year-olds, and every shift I've asked a birthday kid if this is the most fun they've ever had in their life. The typical response is, "YES!" and then they go off and run through an inflatable obstacle course.

I've only worked for three months, but I couldn't tell you how many parties I've lead. They all mush together. But two weeks ago I had the scariest shift yet, and it wasn't just because of the inflatable skeleton standing in the lobby.

While working "Pumpi's Playground", a kid casually walked out of the inflatable and came up to me. Did I say he was covered in blood? His white shirt was a good 40% red.

I immediately went into panic mode. I got all the other kids out of the inflatable, helped clean this guy's wound, and convinced his mom to buy him a new, clean, Pump It Up t-shirt. Then I went in the inflatable with a flashlight, Lysol, and paper towels galore. Within ten minutes I had cleaned it all up, and I reported the incident to the manager. I STILL don't know where all that blood came from. I cleaned a little scratch on his elbow, but this was A LOT of blood in A LOT of places.

Now this is going to sound terrible, but I got a five dollar tip from my manager for cleaning the blood. I'm pretty sure I got a commission for the t-shirt sale too...

But of course, what song was playing when I was approached by a blood soaked seven-year-old? Yep. Technotronic.

Now I haven't seen this Technotronic video before I linked it to my blog. Hopefully my next shift doesn't consist these dance moves and psychedelic colors. But I'll keep you posted.

Get it? Posted. This is a blog. And I'm posting. It's funny. LAUGH!

I Wanna...Put an End to the Idea that Americans are Slackers.

How many high school students do you know that look like this?

Honestly.
 Two Million Minutes. Great movie, but terrible, terrible hasty generalizations. I enjoyed it. It was inspiring. But at the same time a huge blow to the self-esteem of a wannabe engineer. The goal of this movie is respectable. Rah! for patriotism. We will always be the world’s greatest super power! Blah, Blah, Blah. But just like every documentary, I can’t help from thinking every aspect of that film was staged. The indifferent American genius, the Grey’s Anatomy Genetics study party, everything led to the director’s point. American’s are lazy, but fortunate in that we still can be very successful. It’s more competitive for Asians, but even making room to study twenty-five hours a day may not be enough to get what they want. This film was very successful in using scare tactics, to argue one underlying point. With increased globalization these past few decades, competition is transglobal, and America is falling behind. And I totally agree, after seeing the work ethic of some high school students from the viewpoint of one of their peers. Wayzata High School has 26 AP classes to offer. The cheapest way to get college credits. So why do students choose to slide by with a schedule of History of Film, Personal Family Issues 1, Personal Family Issues 2, and Marine Biology? (I don’t mean to bash these classes, I have just heard some things about the effort they require).

But I also see American high school students hard at work, involved in everything, truly seizing every opportunity presented to them. Whites, African-Americans and Asian-Americans all living in their studies. I don’t have a problem with socializing, and in so many career opportunities people-smarts is just as important as book-smarts. I refuse to believe we are going to loose influence in the future years just because we’re graduating fewer engineers.

From my understanding of I Wanna be Average, the reason many students aren't succeeding is because the bobber isn't being thrown out far enough off the shore. Rose uses this metaphor to describe a specific time of his life when vocational education students weren't succeeding because teachers weren't setting the bar high enough. A counterargument to this thought is presented by Patrick Welsh in his article For Once Blame the Students. Welsh stresses student self-initiative, and I think he really respects students that posses a desire to learn. But from my personal experience, I think both are flaws in the American education system. I think it’s ridiculous that some teachers don’t assign work just because they don’t want to grade it. I think it’s even more ridiculous that some students just choose not to do their homework some nights. To be honest, I don’t have a proposal, but the attention these literary works are bringing to these issues are the first steps to changing our system for the better.

Pet Peeves

Some things that occasionally make me hate the world...

• Chewing with your mouth open

• It's carmel. Not "care-a-mel".

• Twirling hair

• Using there instead of their

• Every other word spoken is profane

• Someone who always has a better story 

• Artificial orange flavoring

• Sharing scores on an assingment

• Yelling out answers

The world would be so much better without these.

Obsession Confession

Something has been on my mind. I've got a problem. It's out of my control. It's consuming my life. Goodbye grades. Goodbye social life. 

Hello Dexter.

Dexter Morgan and his twisted "code" is my drug. Familiar with it or not, enjoy this little trailer.

CLICK FOR THE BEGINNING OF THE END OF YOUR SPARE TIME.

So what makes this series so interesting? Let me tell you...

A serial killer killing serial killers. 

Nothing but poetic justice. Dexter Morgan is a blood-splatter analyst for the Miami police department.  However, outside of his job he hunts the very people his job are trying to detain and interview. As creepy as it seems, the story is from the point of view of yep, you guessed it, Dexter. Dexter is a protagonist with EVERY characteristic of an antagonist. Throw in a couple of dysfunctional relationships and some plot twists that will leave your head spinning, and you'll be be consumed by this monster. 

Last June, my friend first introduced me to Dexter on Netflix. Free. Instant. Always at my fingertips. Let's

just say the two seasons on Netflix lasted me a week or so. Naturally I bought the next three seasons on eBay, and they lasted me all but another month. 

And then I was done. There were no more episodes available. (60 episodes)(60 minutes) = 3600 minutes  my life spent, yet I was still unsatisfied.

So I kicked my addiction to the curb right? Actually, yep, I did. No doubt it would occasionally pop into my thoughts, but I'm proud to say I went a streak of 45 whole days without watching an essay.

What happened? I relapsed. Season 6 debuted this past Sunday. And it has clouded my thoughts once again. But I am stronger than this, I have the strength to wait until Winter Break for the next twelve episodes.

What are you thinking? Do you want to watch Dexter? What? You think I'm erratic? You think I'm crazy?

   Say it to this guy.

Knowledge is Power!

In President Barack Obama's Third Annual Back to School Speech, his primary audience is every high school student across the nation. I infer that it's primarily high school students, because the speech addresses trying new things and appreciating every class, instead of addressing arts & crafts. Obama is able to connect to the high school students he is speaking to by referring to him as "you guys", and talking about video games, band, basketball, Facebook and Twitter. This is an effective way of connecting to the audience because one of these things- sports, music, video games and social networking- is a typical common interests for high school students.

Obama's primary argument, is education needs your complete focus if we want to better our nation. His factual reasons to support this argument include him stating that 60% of jobs will need more than a high school diploma, as well we have now decreased from 1st to 16th in proportion of young people who have a college degree. Some basic assumptions in this argument include everyone should want to better the United States' international standings, as well as education is the best way for us to do that.

By using a variety of appeals, Obama tries to convince students about the significance of an education. He
uses Pathos to describe how teachers are "cramming their days" for you, which implies we should not let them down. He argues with Ethos by citing specific examples of highly successful teenagers who have bettered their home communities, as well as the scientific community, with their hard work. Obama even uses Logos by citing a fact stating how important post high school education is for getting a job.

In his speech, Obama uses concise language, and doesn't just read a script, but rather discusses education at a slow pace. He gets his points across in very few words, and speaks slowly so it can be processed before he jumps to his next thought. Obama leans to his right, slouches, and appears to have his left hand hand in his pocket when he's letting us high school students in on his little secret, that he "wasn't always the best student." This movement makes his personal story seem more sincere, while also appealing to the audience's character. He explains how one hour you can be an artist (as he leans to his right), and the next you may want to be a scientist (as he leans to his left). He pauses before saying Twitter, which builds suspense to the comedic aspect of the prestigious President of the United States referencing Twitter. He sets up parallelism by stating "You wonder. You question. You explore. You color outside the lines every now and then."

By keeping his intonation relatively high and constant by saying "although [earning A's] is a good goal to strive for," this sentence stands out from the typical cadence at the end of his sentences. He also raises his intonation when he speaks about how some  might be wondering how you'll pay for college, which suggests having questions about such matters is okay, since you typically raise your intonation in a question. His cadence is especially noticeable when he talks about how important his ethics class is to him today, with that falling intonation and pause adding to his sincerity. Obama ends his speech by changing his tone to that of a pre-game pep talk. A noticeable syntax change with much shorter sentences occurs, which was very effective in drawing my attention. Without looking at his paper, and by using great eye contact, his pointing out on how our country is depending on us high school students is a very uplifting conclusion.







Not to be that guy... but Rick Perry 2012. I had to say it after being so complimentary.