Monthly Archives: March 2014

Personal Stake

I believe that Gen Ed’s are very important in our development as a student and person in college. They allow us to take classes that we might not have ever considered taking before. This gives us the opportunity to explore new fields and help shape our future academic career.

Last semester I took both an architecture course and a immigration course, I am a psych major. When I told people I was taking these classes they asked me why and my answer was because that is just what I signed up for out of the given Gen Ed options. It turned out that I loved both of these courses, my immigration class taught me how to write a real research paper and architecture class showed me there is much more to a building. The classes showed me that there is more to college than just learning about your specific field and there are many more interesting fields to be studied. Gen Ed’s help one find out what they enjoy and maybe what they want to learn more about in the future.

Passion Blog

This week’s topic will be on the subject of the hypebeast. Hypebeast is a made up word used to describe a person who buys something not for it’s aesthetic qualities and personal liking but for the hype that surrounds the item being purchased. As defined by urban dictionary a hypebeast is “a kid that collects clothing, shoes, and accessories for the sole purpose of impressing others. Although the individual may not have a dime to their name they like to front like they are making far more then everybody else. Equipped with mommies credit card the Hype Beast will try his hardest to make sure he has every pair of Nike’s he saw Jay-Z wearing on 106 & Park.” I will now begin to discuss this terminology and the concepts surrounding it.

On about any clothing or shoe forum I have ever been on this word pops up all over the place. It is used as an insult to anyone who is thought to have bought something only for the hype that surrounds it. Basically someone who follows a trend or style only to fit in or be cool, not because they actually believe in it.Like any other offensive word it is easy to throw around. If you see someone wearing the newest Jordan’s that were released last Friday and you’re upset you didn’t have time to camp out all night to buy them you may say something along the lines of, “Joe doesn’t deserve those, he’s just a hypebeast.”

I have always had trouble grasping this word because the whole sneaker movement is based upon getting and giving props to your fellow sneaker heads for their newest kicks. Who knows if someone really likes them? The fact is that we are all influenced by hype in some way or another. Being a psych major I have learned and studied a lot about social conformity and the truth is that it is hard to go against the norm. It is much easier to buy and like a piece of clothing or pair of shoes that everyone else likes as well. That being said, I do have a mental picture of the classic representation of a hypebeast in my head and maybe the pictures below will help you understand more of what I am talking about.

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For those of you who have never heard this word before you probably think it is pretty ridiculous and I’ll admit it someone is. But for someone who is into fashion and collecting clothes, being called a hypebeast comes as the highest insult. Ironically enough the most popular fashion blog on the web is called hypebeast.com (it really is a great blog) and they are doing perfectly fine with that name as their website.

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Passion Blog Week 6

In honor of my roommate bringing back to school with him the most easter, multi-colored, seersucker, short shorts I have ever seen, this week I will be talking about spring wear. Although coming back to State College and having it be 20 degrees, this post seems a bit premature.

We are halfway through March and it still is not particularly warm. As spring creeps closer and closer it is time to put away those heavy coats and switch over to sweatshirts and light jackets. I still suggest to layer even in the springtime. It is ok to wear a cardigan or light jacket over a long sleeve t-shirt or sweater. It is spring but it is not so hot that one will overheat with a few layers.

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With Spring comes Spring colors. Unfortunately it does not always fit with the environment to wear shades of black and gray year round. Spring is where the pastels come out. Light blues, greens, oranges, maybe even…. yellows. Play around with different colors, although it is ok to wear jeans year round a nicely colored pair of shorts can either make or break an outfit. For shoes I would go with some type of sneaker, again colors will work well with the brightly colored trees surrounding you.

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With the coming of Spring also comes Spring collections. A few well noted brands  I check out every year include the much anticipated Surpreme Spring/Summer collection as well as Stussy’s spring collection.

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Please do not forget that it is ok to mix and match brands and designers. Just because you have a vineyard vines shirt on does not mean you need to be wearing pastel shorts and boat shoes. Play around with different clothes you own to find your personal style. Remember to focus on your outfit as a whole and not just individual pieces, find a comfortable look that you are happy with.

Paper 3 Outline

I so far have come up with various ideas for my Paper 3. If I were to take the route of having to choose a topic about Penn State I would go ahead and argue on why there should be no limit to the number of A’s an english teacher can give to her class. This argument directly affects us students as we are all currently in English 15 and it would be interesting to argue our point.

Second I could rhetorically analyze a satiric work. I enjoy the Colbert Report a lot and found his interview with Caitlin Flanagan about fraternities to be hysterical.

Finally I could write about an article I read in the onion while doing our March 7 assignment. I have been reading all of the articles in the Washington Post relating to the disappearance of flight 730 and I found it very surprising that The Onion was willing to try and bring humor to such a situation. Although after reading The Onion’s article they did a great job of bringing to light the point that no one has any clue what actually happened to the plane.

March 7 Satire Assignment

http://www.theonion.com/articles/malaysian-airlines-expands-investigation-to-includ,35524/

This article written by the onion is using satire to show how little has been accomplished in the search for missing Malaysian Airlines Flight 370. The title of the article states that the search area will be widened to also include time and space. This is obviously impossible, but the article is provoking the thought that the search for the vanished Boeing 777 has not been going so well. The location where ships and helicopters have been searching for the plane has been changed many times due to the lack of solid information on where exactly the plane ended up. The article also comments on the fact that no experts know exactly what happened to the plane. In the first paragraph, the article lists a number of proposed reasons of what really happened to the plane and then finally lists the illogical one they came up with, “representatives from the Kuala Lumpur–based carrier acknowledged they had widened their investigation into the vanished Boeing 777 aircraft today to encompass not only the possibilities of mechanical failure, pilot error, terrorist activity, or a botched hijacking, but also the overarching scope of space, time, and humankind’s place in the universe.” The article successfully uses satire to try and evoke an angry response from the reader at these so called search efforts. There were 239 passengers aboard the flight when it disappeared and that is 239 families wondering where their loved ones are.

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/433407/march-03-2014/caitlin-flanagan

In the video clip above Stephen Colbert is interviewing writer Caitlin Flanagan who recently wrote an article titled “The Fraternity Problem”. Colbert was in a fraternity himself and uses satire and sarcasm to disassemble Flanagan’s argument on why fraternities are bad.

Colbert starts out by asking Flanagan questions about why she thinks fraternities are so horrible and then says the worst thing he did while pledging was “pass a grease 45 record from ass-cheek to ass-cheek”. This is something that most people would consider horrible hazing but the tone that Colbert says it in makes it seem funny and not that big of a deal at all. Colbert then uses logos and statistics that 85% of fortune 500 company owners and Supreme Court Justice’s were fraternity members. For his grand finale Colbert forces Flanagan to drink a cup of beer with him that came from a mini keg that was on the set. This is poking fun of the fact that Flanagan said one of the bad things about fraternities was the “violent hazing”. By jokingly having her chug a cup of cold beer with him Colbert is showing that it is all in good fun and fraternities cannot possibly be a problem in any way.

http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html

I read “A modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift back in high. While reading it I was shocked and really had no idea what Swift was trying to say. The concept of eating babies is a little gross to imagine in your head, don’t you think? Through this obscure and illogical idea, Swift creates a satire that serves to criticize the current state of Ireland at the time and the people living in it.

Swift uses the appalling thought of proposing to consume babies to bring up discussion of the horrors in Irish society. Swift uses his satire to shift blame towards many people including not only the wealthy and the English but also the Irish themselves. He shocks the reader in a way that makes them think critically about the policies currently in place in Ireland.

Swift does a very good job of using such an extreme and horrible idea to his advantage, and successfully get his point across.

Letter of Introduction Draft

For Paper 1 I argued that Axe’s Make Love Not War commercial helped sell their new Axe Peace fragrance through a cinematic advertisement. I revised a lot with this paper, I had a little bit of trouble shaping my thesis around the advertisement because it was tough to decipher what exactly made this ad come together and appeal to the viewer. Meeting with you helped a lot with reshaping my thesis, you helped me realize that it was the cinematic approach to the commercial that really brought it full circle. I went back and changed my thesis as well as rephrase some of the points I make in my paper about ethos, logos, etc. to better fit my thesis.

With Paper 2 I argued that USA Today took the approach of playing the blame game and agreeing with the Russian Olympic Coach’s statement about Ovechkin while the Toronto Sun did the opposite and elaborated that it was through bad coaching that Russia did poorly in the olympics. This paper was a little easier for me I think partly because I am a hockey fan and enjoyed analyzing each take on the subject. What also really helped was the strong language and statements that each article made. Through these statements or witty remarks it was very easy to tell which article was either for or against the Russian Coach’s statement. I edited this piece by rereading each article and making sure that my argument fit with what the article was saying. I also did the normal stuff as making sure my argument flowed and all the sentences fit well together.

I believe I have already definitely grown as a writer from this class. I can read a piece and tell that it actually sounds better than stuff that I have wrote in the past. I have learned to make my writing flow a lot better and am now able to identify if a sentence doesn’t seem to fit in the write place or if a sentence is just written poorly altogether. I think what has really helped me with this is the passion blog, I have learned to write more concise sentences using broad vocabulary that get my point across short and swiftly. It is true what you said at the beginning of the year, the key to becoming a better writer is to write!

Japanese Fashion

Here at Penn State we have kids from all over the world who attend. With that comes different culture from all over the world and thus fashion from all over the world. Walking around campus and the streets of State College I have seen the influence of Western clothing on foreign students’ style and every day wear. I would like to focus this week’s topic on Japanese fashion in particular, as one of my favorite streetwear brands, BAPE, originated in Japan.

 

A Bathing Ape (BAPE) was founded in 1993 by Nigo it’s creative director and designer in the Harajuku area of Shibuya in Tokyo. Bape specializes in urban street wear and is now one of the most major players in the streetwear world with some of their original clothing being sold for thousands of dollars. Bape is known for their iconic camo print which has been plastered on not only clothing but on items so peculiar such as tissue boxes, playing cards, and fishing hooks. Bape is also known for their full zip up shark hoodie which is very prominent in rap culture being worn by artists such as Kanye West and ASAP Rocky.  I continue to buy pieces from Bape and am always eager to check out their new line of clothing. Bape was a major influence in Japan’s evolution toward street fashion and has helped shape the current style that is known in Japan today.

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Personally, Japanese Fashion is my favorite foreign fashion. I feel that most European clothing is too flashy and clean cut for my streetwear roots. Although Italy will always be known as the fashion powerhouse as clothing brands such as Prada, Gucci, and Louis Vuitton originated in Italy. However in the recent years Japan has really taken street fashion and made it their own, using skinny jeans and different prints to dress in a bold, stylish manner. One of the most basic outfits you will see around campus from a Japanese student during theses cold winter months will be skinny jeans or joggers, running shoes (usually Asics or New Balance), and a big puffy coat. This makes for a warm stylish outfit and I have seen large groups of Japanese students outside talking all wearing this same exact thing.

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I suggest you always look at what people are wearing around you. Not in a judging manner but for influence. Always be open to new ideas and clothing that you can make your own. We are very lucky to have such a wide variety of culture here at Penn State so take advantage of that fact and pay attention to what the people around you have on.