Decisions Decisions

I'm at an impasse. I cannot decide what I'd like to do my Major Inquiry Project on (henceforth referred to as MIP). I'm torn between doing something lighthearted or doing something productive for the betterment of society. North Carolina on May 8th is voting on Amendment 1, a bill dealing with same-sex marriage in the state. Now, I'm not a homosexual myself, but my father is a male dancer so I've grown up around many, and I have many friends of the persuasion. It's an issue that I feel is very important and is one of the last civil rights hurdles for our country to cross. It being such a major issue, I'm sure I could find an NPO and lots of articles and information regarding it, and I could probably contribute positively to the cause. With this topic I'd also get to see immediate results since the voting is being held right as the semester ends, and I could easily put this on a resume. With that being said, I'm also very interested in the arts and I'd like to explore the art/music/dance scene in Charlotte. It would give me an excuse to go to art galleries and listen to live music and things of that nature. Not to mention, I have some experience in the area from helping my father's dance company do various tasks and book shows. I could however also work on a slightly more serious aspect of a lighter topic and focus on the funding cuts for the arts in North Carolina or more specifically CMS schools, and the impact that this will have on the children and the future. Lots to think about.

Class Reflection - 1/20/12

This week in class we covered how to rhetorically analyze images, advertisements, or any other medium that is presented to us. This was accomplished by viewing various political cartoons, street art by the artist Banksy, and a variety of advertisements. As a class we studied the techniques used and their intended purpose and/or audience. We also briefly covered thesis statement construction for the purpose of rhetorical papers.

Though neither of these topic were new to me, it's always good to review. previous English classes of mine have gone over roughly the same material, but with that being said, I haven't had an english class since spring semester 2010. So, I could probably use a review on some aspects of my writing.

Rhetorical analysis

This is an image that I had posted to tumblr a few months ago. It's a surrealist digital painting by a Hungarian artist by the name of David Szebenyi. The image wasn't a political cartoon per se, but it carries the weight similar to that of one. It's an image of a tower of garbage completely engulfing the planet Earth. It's making a statement about the level of pollution present on our planet. In our current world, we're no longer limited by geography, there is a more global mindset, and as such, artists in Hungary and people in the United States are facing similar issues as members of the same planet. It's a single image, and there are no text, but it takes the "a picture is worth a thousand words" axiom to heart. The contrast between the monochrome of the pollution and the vibrancy of the planet Earth, in addition to the disproportionate amount of garbage, conveys more than any one-liner about how we need to limit our waste. It's over-the-top in nature, but that cartoonish feel manages to balance the importance of the message with levity to make the message viable to the viewer without appearing "preachy". The image in itself does not refer to any specific people or icons; however, that's the genius in it. It manages to be all inclusive without casting blame on anyone in particular.

Myself as a writer/reader

I find myself writing and reading quite often actually. I've been an avid reader my entire life, and in recent history, I've been writing quite a bit more as well. I frequent an irc chatroom filled with a sizable number of people my age with far too much time on their hands, this leads them down paths of intellectual curiosity and ultimately it ends up with nightly debates on topics like religion, politics, science, and/or philosophy. In addition to this chatroom, I've frequented discussion boards since I was 11, and spend far too much time on a website known as Reddit. This website is probably one of the largest discussion boards on the internet and serves as a hub for many of the happenings occurring on the internet (as well as 4chan, but we try not to mention them). Typically, I write as I'm writing now, in a casual manner, but with enough spelling and punctuation that it could pass for "formal" if need be. When I was younger (around 15) I made a conscious decision to type as if I were writing an essay for school at all times in an effort to improve my writing because my lowest section on my SAT was my writing section, and it hindered me from meeting the goal I had set for myself prior to taking it.

As a reader, I'm quite voracious. I always have been. The difference with my reading habits is that I haven't always been interested in reading things that have served any intellectual merit. When I was a child, I was heavily into non-fiction (still am), but around ten or eleven I got my hands on manga (japanese comic books) and the next five or six years of my life and thousands of dollars went into this endeavor. Luckily, when I was around 16, I found a multitude of free online websites that allowed me to get first hand translations of the web comics as they came off the presses in Japan. That, and the fact that many of the series that I had been so fascinated with ended, so it gave me a lot of free time to explore other avenues (currently only 3 are left). Throughout this period I spent far too much time on the internet (as mentioned above), and this led to lots of reading on various topics; however, it was never really my explicit intention to go online because I wanted to read something. When I was seventeen, I began my freshman year of college and around this time, my interest in non-fiction began to bud again because of the lack of manga reading. I've spent many hours reading what most would find heinously boring (e.g. philosophical essays, dry nonfiction science and history books, etc.) but more recently, I've been trying to find some literature that might allow for me to "lighten up" a bit. I've started reading Isaac Asimov's Foundation series (science fiction novels about the budding of a intellectual utopia on the outskirts of space and the challenges it faces as it blooms into a Galactic Empire), some books on pop culture like "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs", and various novels that have been recommended to me in high regard like "Ishmael" by Daniel Quinn. For both my reading and my writing, I do so because I find myself incredibly bored all the time. I dont watch much television anymore because most of it sucks (if I want to watch a television series I'll watch an entire series online, in one sitting practically), and because of various circumstances I have a small group of close friends, all of whom live at the very least 2 hrs away.