Soundtrack to My Life

"The Lazy Song" by Bruno Mars- It's been stuck in my head alllll dayyyy, most likely because I really don't feel like doing anything today.  I am the ultimate procrastinator and love to put things off as far as I can, even though I really hate that about myself (and all of this shitty weather isn't helping).  Plus the music video is kinda hilarious. (It wasn't working on YouTube when I tried it, but this website has the video too)

http://www.directlyrics.com/bruno-mars--the-lazy-song-music-video-news.html

"The Way I Am" by Ingrid Michaelson- This song has sort of ended up being "our song" for me and my boyfriend.  I know, I would probably think "gag me" if anyone said that to me, but as cheesy as it is I love this song.  It is very sweet, laid-back, and uncomplicated, much like our relationship, well most of the time... I always crack up at the part where she says "I'll buy you Rogaine/ When you start losing all your hair" because my boyfriend comes from a family of all bald men, so he is very afraid of going bald and even before I heard this song I always joked with him about how I would buy him Rogaine. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBKAPazypwc&feature=related

"Fuck You" by Cee Lo Green- Even though this song is now totally over-played, I still love it.  I always sing along everytime it comes on.  It also reminds me of my best friend, Alyssa.  She is studying sign language at UW-Milwaukee and lives in a special section of her dorm where her whole floor is either people who have some level of hearing disablility or are currently studying sign language.  Whenever they listen to music they always sign along with the songs so everyone can "hear" and so now whenever I listen to this song I use one of the few signs I remember from that weekend over and over again...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc0mxOXbWIU&oref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fresults%3Fsearch_query%3Dfuck%2Byou%2Bcee%2Blo%26aq%3Df&has_verified=1&oref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fverify_age%3Fnext_url%3Dhttp%253A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%253Fv%253Dpc0mxOXbWIU

"Claire de Lune" by Claude Debussy- I know It's a bit strange to have "Fuck You" and a piece of classical piano music as both describing me, but I'm a bit strange.  I took formal piano lessons for 10 years starting when I was 4.  But really who started getting me to play was my mom.  She used to play songs for my brother and I while we danced around the room.  She also started teaching me piano before I took formal lesson. She would teach me a few things and if did well I got a peanut butter cup.  My mom was also my #1 fan and supporter.  After I stopped taking lessons (because I got as good as my teacher) I taught myself how to play "Claire de Lune" and I think it is a gorgeous song (maybe you've heard it in Ocean's Eleven?).  This video is kinda crappy sound quality but I love how it shows how many notes you actually play.  One thing I really miss about being at school is being able to play piano whenever I want.  The one thing I miss the most here at school is my family, especially my mom.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlvUepMa31o

Adventure to the Library

About an hour ago, I got back from class, sat down, and thought...shit...I didn't get a book yet. So i went to the Library website and typed in "breast cancer prevention" in the MadCat search box.  The first book on the list was titled "Approaches to Breast Cancer Prevention." I saw it was from Ebling Library, which is not suprising to me since I know this library is located in the Health Sciences Learning Center.  All of the other books listed as most relevent to my search were also located around that book, and so I knew this was the best place to go.

So I hoped on my bike and rode over to the HSLC.  I walked into Ebling Library and looked around.  It is absolutely gorgeous (not suprising since I'm sure various medical students spend most of their time there).  I had my headphones in and danced my way down the aisle over to the breast health section.  Around the book I had found on MadCat was a giant section completely dedicated to breast cancer.  I spent a while looking through the section, sitting on the floor flipping through books, and found numerous ones with prevention in the title.  The dates of the book range from 1981 to 2004.  Although 1981 may be a bit dated for current applications of breast cancer prevention, I am going to do a sort of evolution of breast cancer prevention, and if anything these books can hopefully give me a good background on techiniques in prevention.  All of the books seemed a bit dated that were specifically about prevention, but I may take a trip back and look at other books that are about breast cancer in general and see what sort of information they have in them.  I checked out 5 books:

Diagnosis and Treatment of Breast Cancer by Lewison and Montague
Call number: WP 870 D536t 1980

Breast Cancer Detection: Mammography and Other Methods in Breast Imaging 2cd Edition by Bassett and Gold
Call number: WP 870 B8258c 1987

Approaches to Breast Cancer Prevention by Stoll
Call number: WP 870 A652b 1991

Prevention of Breast Cancer by Fentiman
Call number: WP 870 F342p 1993

Organized Breast Cancer Screening Programs in Canada
Call number: WP 870 O65b 2003-2004

Advertisement

The advertisement I chose is a television advertisement for the HP Touchsmart PC: a touch-screen computer.  It starts out zooming in on a young man in a dark place.  He raises his hand and with a flick of the wrist violins kick in, playing a fast paced, intense concerto. He lowers his hand and both the music and he fade away into the darkness.  He raises his hand again and begins conducting the music, along with a visual explosion of computer-like images, such as document icons folded like paper airplanes, flying into the sky, exploding like a firework, and raining down in a shower of letters.  The man is in control of everything around him.  The image then zooms out as the man in the room appears on the computer screen, and a hand appears and conducts the images on the screen, just like the man in the beginning.  A voice comes on and says, “The computer, as you’ve never felt it before.”

This commercial is really trying to tap into people’s creativity, and also shows you how much power and control you can have if you buy this computer.  This advertisement falls under Fowles’ category of the Need for Aesthetic Sensations.  Playing the classical music and having this incredible artistic dream world really tries to show people how creative and free they can be if they have this computer.  I believe this advertisement also falls into the category Need to Dominate.  Having the man conducting all of the events around him is showing that, with this computer, the power is in your hand and the possibilities are endless.  I think this is a very effective advertisement.  The creativity of this ad will get people to pay attention and wait to see what the product is that they are selling.   It is very intriguing and very visually appealing throughout the entire advertisement.

http://www.youtube.com/user/AceMetrix#p/c/6DB48DCE2DC7066A/3/bA47tpYwXuI

Research Question

What stories/historical events have lead us to the prediction that the world will end in 2012?

I am considering writing about 2012 because it is a strange topic.  There are many different stories out there, most probably made up by random people, about how and why the world will end in 2012.  I have briefly heard different stories of how people say it will end (meteors crashing on earth, volcanic ash causing an ice age, etc.) but I don't know where these ideas came from.  I would like to research and see what sort of historical events have lead to this prediction and see if there could be any truth behind it.  I don't know much about the topic, and honestly don't believe that the world will end in 2012, but i still think it is an obscure topic with lots of scepticism and debate over it which I could use for evidence.  I would most likely research and only include the stories/scenarios that are commonly repeated throughout sources in order to try and weed out the truly insane people.

Something Borrowed

In his essay titled "Something Borrowed," Malcolm Gladwell questions whether plagiarism is always a terrible act to commit.  Gladwell describes how Bryony Lavery plagiarized throughout her play "Frozen" from Gladwell himself and Dorothy Lewis.  She bases a main character in her play off of Lewis, but does not get permission to do so because she took the information about Lewis from Gladwell's profile of her published in The New Yorker.  Lavery had made sure to get permission from other sources she used in her play, but did not even think to ask Lewis because she saw the piece as "news" and thought of it as free to the public and O.K. to take from.  She also stated that she exactly copied because she wanted to be accurate and exact in the information she was using and providing through her play.  Gladwell states that he feels her plagiarism is not completely wrong in this case because she took the information from this piece and transformed it in order to use it for a completely new purpose than what the original essay's purpose was.  Gladwell also includes examples of plagiarism in music where there are segments of songs that have similar or even identical patterns of notes within them, but they are completely different songs.  As another example, Gladwell proposes the instance that if someone were to find a cure to breast cancer and patented it, this only can secure a person's rights to claim it as their own for a certain period of time and then everyone can copy and mass-produce this cure.  Because it is in the population's best interests to be able to mass produce the cure, the individual rights to it can't be protected forever.  Although he does state that exact copying is wrong, Gladwell uses these as examples to show how plagiarism is not a terrible act.

I agree with Gladwell's opinion that plagiarism is not a terrible crime, or even a crime in all instances.  If you take something and use it in a completely different way, I do not believe that it is a wrong thing to do.  For instance, while I was taking piano lessons, I was given the assignment to write a song.  I found this task extremely difficult because whenever began writing something, I realized it sounded exactly like other songs that I knew and liked.  I was unconsciously pulling melodies out of my head and believed them to be my own, at least at first.  I also think that if people are writing on the same topic, their pieces will end up sounding very similar.  For example, this blog most likely sounds very similar to the blogs my classmates have written.  I may have even used all of the same examples from the essay that someone else did, but I am not plagiarizing their work or stealing their ideas, because I havn't read any of the other blogs prior to writing this.  I do believe that just copying a work or exact segment of anything is wrong without getting permission, but using those segments as inspiration or transforming their meaning is fine in my eyes.  I found this piece to be very intriguing and well written.  I enjoyed the piece and thought it brought to light the many holes in the grand idea of plagiarism.

Racism

In the chapter titled "Racism" in Ayn Rand's book The Virtue of Selfishness, she expresses her feelings that racism is an infringement on individual rights and morally wrong no matter who you are or where you come from.  She emphasizes that people should not be placed into groups solely because they have the same race. Rand states, "A genius is a genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race- and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial origin."  She is trying to emphasize the fact that people cannot be grouped together based on race because each person in it is different from eachother, including a person's own ancestors.  Due to the fact that she believes racism is on an individual level rather than against a people as a whole, she is against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  She explains that the government should not be allowed to infringe on the rights of any person, including a white man who refuses to allow black people into his restaurant or any other sort of private property.  She agrees that black people should not be discriminated against in government-owned facilities and establishments, but feels that it is racist to impede on the rights of private property.  "Just as we have to protect a communist's freedom of speech, even though his doctrines are evil, so we have to protect a racist's right to the use and disposal of his own property.  She sums up her opinions by stating, "if the 'civil rights' bill is passed, it will be the worst breach of property rights in the sorry record of American history in respect to that subject."

I agree with Rand's opinion that you cannot categorize any person based on the actions or believes of their ancestors or other people in the same racial category.  Even at the initial point just before she goes completely radical, I agreed with her statements that no race should get preferential treatment in terms of jobs. I also feel this way about preferential treatment based on sex.  People have often commented to me that I should go into certain professions because, as a woman, I will be more likely to get a job; the profession "needs more women in the field."  I personally do not believe that race or sex (or anything else along those lines) will affect a persons job performance and I do believe it is selectively racist/sexist against those who lose out on opportunities because of this.  After this point, she goes much more radical than I would ever take it, saying that we should continue poorly treating and excluding people from basic societal rights, because it will infringe on a white person's rights to private property.  The Civil Rights Act of 1964 allowed everyone to have the opportunity to be on the same level, yet Rand sees it as racially discriminant against white people.  Overall I found the piece to be intriguing, boring, and then strange.

Solution to Saturday's Puzzle

I found this piece to be funny.  Sedaris is describing a very awkward social situation that each of us can relate to in a way.  He took the ordinary story and made it more humorous by placing more emphasis on the events that occurred.  For example, I'm sure he exaggerated some of the things the woman did to make them seem more obnoxious or outrageous, which means more funny to us.  He also includes all of his personal thoughts on each event, things we would not have normally known were happening had we been watching. For example, we wouldn't have known that he was writing all of those funny little comments as his answers for the Times crossword puzzle.  I believe that one thing that makes something funny is that they are out-of-the-ordinary, unexpected, or outrageous.  As an example, many people find watching other people get hurt hilarious.  Many of the Super Bowl commercials this year featured people getting smacked in the head or hit in the balls.  We find it funny because usually we weren't expecting it to happen, and they have an injury occur in a bizarre or out-of-the-ordinary way.  So to make his story of this plane ride more humorous, he exaggerates events and includes things that make the story more unexpected or outrageous.

Joke:
A flight attendant was stationed at the departure gate to check tickets. As a man approached, she extended her hand for the ticket and he opened his trench coat and flashed her. Without missing a beat she said, "Sir, I need to see your ticket not your stub."

P.S.- Otto, you really didn't have chocolate on your face during our meeting so that must have happened with the chocolate I gave you when I was leaving.  I did laugh my ass off when I read that email though!!!!!

The Klansman who Won't Say the N-Word

In this chapter of Jon Ronson's Them: Adventures with Extremists, the author is interested in the Ku Klux Klan, how they are changing, and showing the stupidity of these Klansmen.  Thom Robb, the leader of the Klan, is trying to move the Klan in a new direction and have the focus be more on white supremacy rather than black demise.  Robb was particularly distraught whenever someone walked past saying the N-word or "Jew."  Ronson, being a Jewish, British journalist, was welcomed into the group.  Ronson provides numerous little events throughout the narrative that makes the Klan seem innocent and frankly, dumb.  Giving out personality tests from a magazine and praising a Jewish man for wearing a KKK robe shows us how the Klansmen are not very intelligent.  It also shows how they don't think of the Klan as a radical group, but just like any other interest group. This KKK's annual National Congress is really more of a summer camp than a grand gathering for radical white supremacists.  The most ironic part of this piece is how much Jewish influence is on this camp, from a Calvin Klein t-shirt, to a collection of Walter Matthau movies as a raffle prize, to their prized movie Birth of a Nation, who was funded by (and also who reaped the profits from) Louis Mayer. 

I found this narrative of the Ku Klux Klan to be very comical.  I was surprised by the fact that Thom is trying to change them to be more socially acceptable and less violent.  The descriptions make me think of them as blundering Southerners who have radical beliefs, but don't even support them much themselves.  One thing I questioned in this piece is whether the Klan realized Ronson is Jewish.  Most Jewish men have distinct qualities (stereotypically) that can identify them as being Jewish, and one would think that if anyone would be able to point out a Jewish man, it would be the KKK.  This welcoming of Ronson, and even having him try on the robe just shows the pure stupidity of these men.  This narrative shows the complete invalidity of the KKK's beliefs. 

Bitch

Beverly Gross wrote an article in Salmagundi Magazine titled "Bitch."  And that's exactly what it's about: the word bitch and its many various meaning.  She uses various sources to give definitions of bitch including dictionaries, surveys shes held in class, and even a quote from Barbara Bush.   Early definitions describe it as a loose woman, but the definition has changed many times as the years have passed.  Gross says that bitch is the worst thing you can call a woman, worse than whore or cunt or any other word you can think of.  She later contradicts this and talks about how bitch is commonly used in "black vernacular." It is not used to speak poorly about women, but is just sort of nickname for girls (like how many black men refer to each other as "nigger").  Most of the definitions she provides seem to have a common theme. A powerful woman is a threat to society and we need a way to cut her down, and so we call her a bitch.

I found Gross's article to be too over the top on feminist standpoints.  She is very professional in her writing on this subject, but she is too obsessed with the fact that the word is directed towards women.  There are other words that are directed only at men, such as bastard, that nowadays ends up meaning the same thing as bitch.  Gross provides a convincing argument, but my personal views are not swayed because of it.  I found the piece very interesting and comical, but honestly found the strong feminist views throughout to get annoying.

Ellloooooo :)

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