Daily Archives: October 31, 2012

Pumpkin Masterpiece

Posted on October 31, 2012 | 2 comments

Given the fact that it is Halloween I felt that this craft fits wonderfully with the holiday. I had never carved a pumpkin before and when I told this to my friends they thought I was crazy. Their first response was to go and get a huge pumpkin and then we proceeded to carve it. We first bought one of the carving kits from McLanahan’s that was Penn State themed. Our initial goal was to mimic our Penn State Silks shirts, but let’s be honest that didn’t work out. So first we had to clean out the pumpkin. My friends started to do it as I patiently observed. But then they saw me being lazy and handed me the scoop. I wasn’t too happy. I thought it was going to be gross, but it actually turned out to be a lot of fun. I mean don’t get me wrong all of the guts were disgusting, but there was something about scraping it down to the edge that was really fun. After we had finally cleaned out all of the guts came tracing the design onto the pumpkin. We had a really thin sharpie with us to try and get it to work. But that was a failure. We resorted to stabbing the design with the carving knife and making a sort of connect-the-dots type thing. We each took turns doing a certain part of it because after a while it got tiring of jabbing the knife into the pumpkin. We had finally finished with that and we decided to take a break and enjoy some apple donuts and apple cider. I highly recommend doing so. And finally came the actual carving of the pumpkin. We again took turns going through and cutting sections out. I had to step out to talk to my mom for a bit and when I came back the carving knife had been broken. So in all I’d definitely recommend doing this if you haven’t before. Also get a better and sturdier knife. This cheap one probably cost all of three cents to be mass produced and could bend whatever way your heart desired.  And lastly surround yourself with some good company and great food. It’s relatively easy and not as gross as everyone makes it out to be. If you do it (even though Halloween is technically over) have fun. And Happy Halloween! 🙂

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Ted Talk- Me vs. My mom?

Posted on October 31, 2012 | Leave a comment

So when the assignment of the TED talk was first given to us I immediately freaked out because I had no conceivable idea on how to make the shift of cell phone dependency into an interesting speech. After a little bit of thinking I think I’ve found out what I want to talk about. I want to push my point that cell phones have had a tremendous effect on everyone, especially our generation, those of Generation Y. We were the first generation to really grow up in a tech-savy world and I think that has greatly affected us. To make the speech more interesting I want to include a day in my life without my phone compared to a day in my mom’s life without her phone. She only uses it for calling people (if she even knows where it is), I on the other hand always have my phone handy and am constantly doing something on it, whether it be texting, checking emails or playing a game).I feel like this will illustrate my argument greatly because my mom is part of the Baby Boomers and I am a Gen Y kid, so we are coming from two extremely different eras. I also want to include more interesting things. I have yet to think of any, but I am bound to do so eventually. Maybe instead of trying to get all of my arguments out in my speech I’ll just focus on the increase in dependency on cell phones. Perhaps I could compare my childhood life of playing outside and using land lines to those of kids now who are able to text their neighbors to see if they want to play video games. And also I will most likely include an instance of an awkward situation where everyone has their cell phones out to avoid conversing with people. Anyways, I definitely have some strong ideas, in my opinion, but I think I really need to focus on one topic and make it a less broad speech so that I don’t get confused when I am giving it.

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WIP… kind of

Posted on October 31, 2012 | 1 comment

Alright, so this isn’t exactly a work in progress. But I look at it as me progressing my skills in analyzing the rhetoric of various things.

Given the weather circumstances in the past week there has been a definite increase in the number of Hurricane Sandy memes pop up around the internet. Most of the ones that were brought to my attention were on the Penn State Memes page. One of my favorites was of Bad Luck Brian, saying that UPark had cancelled classes after 1:10 and then Brian only had classes from 8 to 1:10. This fits my life perfectly. I had just gotten back to my dorm room after my last class that ended at noon. I checked my phone and I got the text confirming classes for the day had been cancelled. Needless to say I was not pleased. I feel like this was the case for many kids on campus on Monday. And because of this it is a relatable post and succeeds in rhetoric in that it appeals to those who are going to be seeing it.

Another one that I enjoyed was one that compared the administrators to stumped monkeys. In the upper half of the meme there is a weatherman showing the impacts that Sandy is going to have, with the quote “This may be the biggest storm of the century.” And beneath that is a picture of some monkeys dressed to the nines with the quote “Meanwhile at Old Main”. Again, this comic definitely succeeds in rhetoric. Clearly, the population of University Park was upset with the administrators when they had not cancelled classes for Tuesday. Although it is somewhat offensive, I find this meme hilarious. It’s certainly a case of “Everyone’s thinking it, I’m just saying it” because no one really wants to poke fun of the admins, but I’m pretty sure no one enjoyed walking to class on Monday in strong winds, with cold rain, and a broken umbrella as a result of the winds. Anyways, I think Hurricane Sandy ended up producing some good memes for the Penn State community, but that is as its actual physical impacts were not so great.

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