TOW #14-The Last Amazon by Jill Lepore (Written)

The Last Amazon by Jill Lepore is an article on The New Yorker's website. It is a critique on D.C.'s usage of the character Wonder Woman, and how she could be so much more than the studio is letting her be. It highlights the feminist issues of women that are as amazing and can kick as much butt and men getting sidelined to let the men (read: Superman and Batman) have their “epic duels”. Lepore uses a lot of rhetoric in her article, one of the most effective is her look back into history, at where Wonder Woman originated. She even goes to the max as to find the son of two feminists who evolved Wonder Woman to see what he thought. She also quotes experts on Wonder Woman, and how the figure has evolved.

Another thing Lepore does is use comparisons really well to highlight her point. For example, she points out Captain America vs Wonder Woman, and who would be easier to age up to modern times (Wonder Woman, of course). She also uses the movie in which Wonder Woman played by Gage Gadot will be in, Superman vs. Batman, as a jumping point for the injustice done to Wonder Woman. For example, she uses another critic's example of an alternate title for the movie, “Batman vs. Superman with also some Wonder Woman in there so sit down ladies we're treating you fine: The Movie”. This also showcases a slightly underrated part of Lepore's article, the humor and sarcasm aspect. Lepore also quotes many wall known feminists, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Max Eastman, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Lepore ends with the call to attention of how much has still to change. “She'd have to take stock, and what could she say about what women have got? Brest bumps and fetal rights instead of paid maternity leave and equal rights? Longer hours instead of equal pay?”

TOW #13- Bossypants by Tina Fey (IRB)

          One of the funniest things about Tina Fey's book Bossypants is the not so subtle pointing out of her literary techniques. These are presented as commentary on what she has already written placed in between of parentheses. For example, this hilarious insert where she is talking about her resemblance to Sarah Palin, and Fey says, "Lorne and I discussed the overwhelming public opinion (hyperbole) that I should play Governor Palin," (Fey 202). No, that was not me putting in the word hyperbole to show where it was, that was Fey clarifying that no, there wasn't hoards of people clamoring for her to play Sarah Palin. Fey also does this by adding an aster ix, so she can add a note at the bottom of the page. She does this when she says, "...after inspecting the cleanliness of Oprah's airplane, set, and dressing room the next morning*.." and then at the bottom of the page, "This is not something I would normally do, but I wanted everything to be perfect for Miss Oprah. Jon Hamm, if you come back, I will not preinspect your toilet. I may inspect it afterward to make sure you didn't steal anything." This adds so much humor in her own voice, and makes it seem less edited than the rest of the book even though you know that the whole book is edited a lot.

         The thing that I bring away from the book is how Tina Fey is trying so hard to seem like a normal person when it is obvious she is a hilarious goddess sent to Earth as a reincarnation of the comedy muse of the old religions. She speaks about her insecurities regularly, really making it seem like she is a real woman, which she is. I think the best part of this is seeing how she views her own life. She eve says once that her kid's 6^th birthday party theme was just important as the Oprah guest starring on 30 Rock, and that really puts into perspective how crazy celebrity's lives can be.

TOW #12- Ferguson Decision Reaffirms Right Of Police To Use Deadly Force When They Feel Sufficiently Inclined by the Onion (Written)

Ferguson is one of the biggest throwdowns between the American people and the American government happening right now. Ferguson is on everyone's minds, and even topped the always fun Black Friday riots. Everyone has their opinions about Ferguson, unless they are small and childlike and cannot read. The Onion takes this big national problem, and the decision not to put Darren Wilson in jail, and brings the real truth out of it, using satire with humor and sarcasm. Though these riots are the biggest that have happened maybe in my lifetime, Darren Wilson still says that stepping down from his job was worse than shooting an unarmed kid. The riots I am speaking about swept the nation after the not guilty verdict, and have been going on in most populous cities. Even around the world, people are protesting. Even in football stadiums, the players are protesting, using the now famous “Hands up Don't Shoot” signal.

Besides hitting the clear racism involved in this whole event, The Onion hits how dumb the decision was, using fake statistics and even faker professional sources. They do this to mimic how the trial was put on too. They also do it to ridicule how horrible and racist of a person you have to people to shoot an unarmed man, who was running away. Social media is inflamed, and the Onion showcases that by pretending to be a legitimate news source, unlike CNN and Yahoo, which are taking down links associated with Ferguson. Bravo to the brave protestors, who have been getting tear gassed and beaten. Bravo to the protestors around the world, who stand by American citizens. Bravo to the CIA, who are looking into how the case was handled. And finally, bravo to the racists out there, who have proven loud and clear that racism is not dead in America. And yes, it still counts if you have that one token black friend. 

TOW #11 Bossypants by Tina Fey (IRB)

Bossypants by Tina Fey is Fey's comical retelling of her life. What strikes you first is the visual rhetoric right on the front cover. It is Tina Fey, with man hands. Literally, just man hands. Since I'm not that far into the book, I'm not really sure what it means, but it seems to have to do something with feminism. Maybe it is saying that she didn't need to be a man to succeed, or maybe it is just there to look funny. As most autobiographies do, this one starts at the beginning of Fey's life, when she is an awkward, gangly child. Most of her rhetorical devices revolve around humor, as she uses a wry tone to describe her life. Her look back includes lots of hyperbole, as she admits to using it a lot to make it seem like her life is more interesting, as she says. There is a lot of biting sarcasm in the book, like when she is retelling the 'incident' I won't say any spoilers, but the second hand embarrassment she feels when looking back at the incident is enough to enduce her tone to turn sharper, while still staying funny.
Fey is the funnyman, sorry, funnywoman of television. From SNL to 30 Rock, and a million movies in between, she has made thousands of people laugh. She downplays her famousness though, making it seem as though she is just a normal person, which I suppose, she is. Another stellar part of this book is that Fey knows she's namedropping, and she uses it well. There's the name dropping of producers and actors, but most importantly her partner in crime Amy Poelher. Again, in her super sarcastic tone, Fey calls herself out on the namedropping, increasing the love the audience feels for her, aka, pathos. Fey is at her best in this funny, groundbreakingly feminist book.

TOW #10- Hunger Games Movie Poster (Visual)

   The Hunger Games, a worldwide phenomenon of a book series has a four movie deal for three books. Written by Suzanne Collins and produced by Lionsgate, teens love these movies. The poster for the Hunger Games really evokes the dark, gruesome ideas of the movie. The whole thing is in dark shades, black, brown, and gray, while the focal point of the whole poster is the burning mockingjay pin in the center, blown up very large and a bright gold color. Katniss' back is turned from the audience as she looks at the pin too. The people from the Capitol, the audience for the gruesome games are seen on the side, also looking at the pin. I think the on fire pin is the whole center of this poster, because it represents the whole revolutionary theme of the story.
  This poster is trying to sell this movie, and the pin is the most exciting object of the poster. This makes people want to see the movie more, because fire means the movie is going to be exciting and possibly have explosions, which is always a box office booster (see all of the Transformer movies for reference). The audience also comes for the stars. Jennifer Lawrence is one of the most popular young actresses of the era, and fans of her will want to see this movie. The poster taps into this by having her front and center. Even though you cannot see her face, on the mini flags next to her, you can clearly see her face and Peeta's, or Josh Huterson's. Their star power is another thing that really draws crowds in. The final thing that dramatizes this poster is the slogan at the top that reads "the world will be watching". This is a statement that encompasses the movie and the plotline. It gives a sense of jumping on the bandwagon, that everyone is going to see this movie so you must too. As a whole, this poster is very highly produced in a way that attempts to persaude the onlooker to watch the movie.

IRB Intro Post #2- Bossy Pants by Tina Fey

I am going to be reading Bossy Pants by Tina Fey. I decided to read this book because I heard it was really good and funny. Also, I like Tina Fey. Hopefully it will live up to expectations.

TOW #9- 25 Years After Fall of Berlin Wall (Written)

     From the Daily Signal, a new website, comes an article called 25 Years After Fall of Berlin Wall, a pretty self explanatory title. What interested me in this article was twofold. First was the title itself. The Berlin Wall is something I have very, very little background knowledge of and I had been seeing it in pictures all of today, and I was curious. Also, it surprised me that only 25 years had passed since the fall of the wall, meaning that it fell in 1989, a pretty progressive time, but only a couple years before I was born. The second thing that interested me was that the article was written by Ted Cruz, a politician. I was curious to see if there was any political bias on the article, or if Cruz was genuinely writing a non-biased article.

    Cruz uses many literary devices, at the forefront, pathos. This pathos is very potent, because not only does it target people who were alive and probably saw this stuff in the newspapers in the morning, but also because it uses pictures to do so. And then the political bias starts to kick in, a bias that most American politicans and people hold today, the bias against communism. Cruz uses strong vocabulary to emphasize how horrible communism is, saying, "Untold numbers slaved away in work camps under horrific conditions." He then also uses very credible sources, citing a survivor of the Soviet gulag. All this culminates to the point where he is reveling in the American inherent goodness, citing America the beautiful. It was interesting to see how Cruz used rhetoric to shape the thoughts of readers, so hey, maybe he went through APELC too.

TOW #8- Covergirl Advertisement (Visual)

     Covergirl is a makeup brand that sells hundreds of products including mascara, eyeliner, and blush. Their whole marketing strategy is based around getting celebrities to endorse their products. Their ads have features people from Ellen Degeneres to Sophia Vergara. The ads are often very sleek and clean, making them look very sophisticated. The slogan of the whole ad campaign is easy, breezy, beautiful, which makes for a memorable slogan that many people in the world could recognize. The whole purpose of the advertisement is to get women to buy their makeup. By showing the sophisticated celebrities, the ad creates a sense of wanting to be as glamorous as those celebrities. The slogan gives it that memorable appeal, making sure that customers will remember the name. The author, or rather photographer and photoshoppers of these ads know their customer, and want to market it specifically to them. They do this by placing the ads in magazines where potential customers may be, like Vogue. They don't place the ads in magazines where potential customers wouldn't be, like Time.

     The advertisement that I have in front of me has Sophia Vergara as the main subject of the ad. At first glance, you wouldn't even think this ad was about anything but Vergara. She is the spotlight, and the eye catcher, the trick to make people look closer at the ad to read the text that says Covergirl. Her eyes mainly, are the focus of this piece, because they are selling mascara. She looks beautiful, so people seeing it would want to look beautiful like her, which is the reasoning of the advertisers. That is how they reel people in so that once they are interested in the ad, they can start to sell their actual product. This is how advertisement works, always trying to get inside the customer's head, and this Covergirl advertisement is an example of that.

TOW #7- The Strange, Isolated Life of a 21st Century Tuberculosis Patient (Written)

    The Strange, Isolated Life of a 21st Century Tuberculosis Patient is written by Natalie Shure, a woman who contracted tuberculosis while on a Peace Corps trip to Ukraine. Tuberculosis is contracted through the air, so patients have to be quarantined, which leads to depression and loneliness. Shure explains the loneliness that she felt, and how she fought through that loneliness. She uses a lot of pathos while writing this, as a lot of stories concerning disease patients often do, because we automatically feel bad for them for having whatever disease they have. Then they amplify that by showing how bad it actually is. Shure also uses anecdotes to tell her story. First she tells how she got the disease, then what happened when she got home from the trip, and on and on. I think the purpose of the anecdotes is to really show it from Shure's eyes, how she was just a normal girl, and then this horrible thing happened. It makes it easier to connect with her through the way she writes about the little moments in her life.

      But I don't think her purpose was to make us feel bad. I think Shure's purpose was just to educate people on how she, and other quarantined patients feel. The brightest part of this essay was when Shure was talking about her friend, Ksenia that she had met through the internet. Ksenia also had tuberculosis, and they really connected with each other. By talking about their beautiful friendship last, Shure left the readers with a sense of hope and happiness. She left the feeling that even if you're in a horrible situation, making the best out of it is the only thing you can really do. In the end, I really think Shure's final purpose was to educate people about how she lives, and also that tuberculosis still exists, because I didn't know that it did.

TOW #6- What you need to know about Ebola- The Onion (Written)

      Ebola is the disease that everyone is freaking out over, so of course the Onion had to cover it. Full disclosure, The Onion is a satirical website, which means that it is definitely the wrong website to be getting Ebola tips from. The article superficially looks like many of these Ebola articles look like, or any disease articles look like. There are questions that a person would typically ask, and then the answer. This way of presenting this article give it a bit of ethos, so that some people would actually be tricked into believing all this information was true. That's how the Onion works, in a sense. There are the people who know it's satire, and then there's the poor unfortunate people who don't, and will take this very seriously.

        The thing about satire is that it is usually used to prove a point, because they'll say something frankly and it's begin as a joke, until you realize it's actually true. For example, in the article where it says, "Ebola is contracted through contact with a health care system that vastly overestimates its preparedness for a global pandemic". It takes you a moment to realize that what they're saying, is in fact true. Another example, "How are Ebola outbreaks contained? Great question!" This hits home the point that they don't really know because we haven't contained it. Using satire, ethos, and humor, the Onion makes you think more about Ebola and what is actually going on with it, which is what I think their purpose was. Finally, the thing that got me at the end, was the final question. “When will all this Ebola hysteria end? For you? At exactly 11:18 a.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 28”. That got me at the end, because the real point of the Onion is to entertain, which is hit home but that last laugh.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/what-you-need-to-know-ebola,37137/

TOW #5- The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls (IRB)

         The second part of Jeannette Walls' memoir focuses on her life in Welch, a little town in Virginia, and how she got out of Welch. This second part is a story of growth and realization that her parents aren't all that she thought they were. This is Walls growing up, and out growing her parents' way of living. First she chronicles the years of her life spent in dreary Welch, an old mining town fallen into poverty. It is a place one strives to escape, as the young Walls sets that as her goal. After she and her sister have escaped, they start new lives in New York City, but their parents still haunt them. In the end, it is a story about how she grew into her own person, but her parents' crazy lives will always have a lasting impact on her own, no matter how hard she tries to hide it.

       Walls didn't seem to have a specific purpose in writing her memoir. She wanted to tell someone about her crazy childhood and life, she wants people to understand her story, but I think mainly she wants people to see that where, or how, you grow up, doesn't have to influence who you are. Her family influences her life majorly, but she also makes something out of herself without forgetting them and their different way of life. A scene that really captures this is the last one, where Walls' two lives are colliding, the calm, serene one with her husband and farmhouse, and the crazy one with her mother coming over for Thanksgiving. While there are still some bitter thoughts, for the most part they are all happy and laughing as a family, remembering the good times. This ultimately, is the feeling that one pulls away from the memoir. That family can be crazy, and not so great, but in the end it always pulls together because of the shared memories.

TOW #4- America Responds to the Latest Mass Shootings (Visual)

    Yet another school shooting, just another day in the life of every American. Is this what we are now? A society where a norm is little kids getting shot? This is what this cartoon is questioning. It is also very true. In the days since the Sandy Hook shootings, there have been a multitude of new examples. 74, just in schools. Everyday, there is another story, another hundred people grieving for their loved ones. Now, it is so commonplace that the news may spend just ten minutes, or less on it, before going on, to explain other things, like how a Kardashian is pregnant. Chris Britt showcases this horrible cultural phenomenon that is taking place, through the Creators Syndicate, a website where hundreds of political cartoons are posted weekly.
   Did everyone know during the Sandy Hook tragedy, that it wasn't going to change anything? Did the optimists push it to the back of their minds while the pessimists complained loudly? Not much has changed in the policies that govern  gun rights. Americans have become jaded, and this is what Britt shows. People dying is no longer something out of the ordinary., but nobody expects it to happen to them. I am sitting in a school right now, one very similar to Sandy Hook. Do the gun regulations make me safe? No, as the 74 school shootings since Sandy Hook have proved. Americans need to stop thinking of these shootings as just something on the news, and start thinking of them as very real threats, because they are.

TOW #3- I Had a Stroke at 33 by Christine Hyung-Oak Lee (Written)

      I Had a Stoke at 33 is a long form Buzzfeed article written by Christine Hyung-Oak Lee. It is about her personal experience of having a stroke very young because of a hole in her heart. While not lacking in many medical details, the main focus of this article is about how she felt during and after the stroke. It's how her life went into a tailspin, but ultimately made her into the person she is today. Since the article is on Buzzfeed, it is mostly targeted towards the younger generations, probably teenagers, or people in their twenties. While the story is sad, telling about her life feel apart, it also inspires hope, that she was able to fight through this tragic event. It showcases how the people around her dealt with it, but mostly importantly how Christine dealt with it.

      A stroke is a horrible thing, that changes brain patterns forever. At just 33, Christine's way of life, her way of thinking, everything about her, was scrambled. She had to quit her job, she divorced her husband, and her thoughts would never be the same. But ultimately, out of all these struggles, she gets her life back on track. I think her purpose is to educate and inspire. Educate people about what happens when you have a stroke, so maybe people that know stroke victims can be even more understanding. Inspire people not to give up, to keep on fighting through whatever is afflicting them. I think she did accomplish this, because before reading this article, I had no idea what a stroke was like. I only knew the physical, that you sometimes got paralyzed. I didn't know the mental effects, or the social effects. Inspiring is a little harder, but I believe she did that too, because I was hooked the instant I started reading, then thought about it many times during the day after that. By speaking up about her stroke. Christine has educated at least one more person, me.

Link: http://www.buzzfeed.com/xtinehlee/i-had-a-stroke-at-33#1u9787

TOW #2- The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls (IRB)

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls is a memoir about Walls' life, and the crazy nomadic life she had with her family. The first part of the Glass Castle is purely about her childhood, starting from when she was very young and continuing until she is around ten or eleven. Her and her siblings' lives are greatly influenced by their parents, who many would say are not the best of parents. Her mother is a free spirited woman who does not believe in rules while her father is a brilliant drunk, chasing the dream of inventing something great, even if it leads his family to ruin. While most people would agree that Walls' childhood was not the best, she paints it in the light that showed she was always happy with her situation, blinded by her childhood innocence that saw her parents always as heroes.

Using descriptive language, Walls paints the story of her family in the desert. She tells it as a narrative, flowing from one story, one home, one crazy adventure, to the next. It seems, her purpose for this first part of the book, is to show how even if their way of living was not the same as everyone else, they were happy. Even through out when they were hungry, fighting, or in a rough patch, they would come together and become one happy family again. It seemed their problems would always be fixed with one action that showed good faith. For example, when her mom and dad were physically fighting one time, it ended with them laughing together and saying they loved each other. Not to say that their problems were not major, but I think that Walls got her point across that you don't have to have the typical suburban American life to be happy. 

IRB Intro #1- The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

I am going to be reading The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls for my IRB. It is a memoir about Walls' life and family. I decided to read this book because I was going to read it last year for school, but I ran out of time. Also, my friend and Ms. Torresani, my teacher from last year, recommended it. Hopefully it will be good, because they say it is.

TOW #1-How to Say Nothing in 500 Words (Written)

          How to Say Nothing in 500 Words is a guide to what every student does, and how to avoid it. Written by Paul Roberts, a writer well-educated in the ways of the English language who has written many textbooks about the subject, it is witty and concise, while still teaching the reader how to write better. Primarily for students to read, he writes it in the voice of a college professor, frustrated by the lack of originality and good writing in his student's essays. It is heavy in examples, all which I could relate to. For example, the sample essay about college football sounded exactly like what I would write at eleven pm on a Sunday night, which was exactly his point. It really struck me how much I could relate to the examples of bad writing in the article, which is how Roberts intended to get through to his readers.

         Roberts used ten headers to organize his piece, and they were the important overall ideas that the paragraphs underneath them would flesh out. They really helped support his main purpose to educate readers because like he said to, first he gave the main idea and then added details. I think he did achieve his purpose to educate, or at least get readers to start thinking about how they write because it did make me think over my writing to figure out what good and bad things I am doing. One quirky thing I noticed is that it was written way back in 1958, which explains the typewriter, but it also shows how student's writing styles haven't changed a bit since 1958. I could have seen myself writing that bad essay on college football, which hits home to his point in writing the piece, to at least influence a couple of people to stop the bad writing that has been going on since 1958.

A Drugstore in Winter: Cynthia Ozick

      A Drugstore in Winter by Cynthia Ozick is about Ozick's progression of reading, and how it is her escape from life. Ozick is a Jewish-American writer from New York City, and in this short essay she writes about how reading was her way to take a break from the struggles that plagued her everyday life during the Depression. I think her audience is anyone that reads, and enjoys it, because this essay is a celebration of how reading is a well-needed escape, as well as a way to find out who you really are. It starts with Ozick as a young child, reading the books she could get from the traveling bookstore, her mother's magazines, and anywhere she could find material to read. She is invisible at first, but blossoms into her own as an avid reader as the story goes on.

    I think that Ozick did complete her task of showing how reading shaped her life. It was her go to comfort when bad things happened, but also a way to relate to the world, to put her story out there too. She tells her story through the medium of books, who gave her what books, and what happened to those people. Her memories are tied to books that keep those people's memories alive. As the darkness starts to creep in, and she grows older, it turns into a way to remember happier times. For example, “but after a while other ambushes begin: sorrows deaths, disappointments..” (Ozick 495). This is her childhood slowly ending, tearing her away from the books that she loves, but she eventually finds her way back to them, as well as the memories that she loves. “...and then one day you find yourself leaning here, writing at that selfsame round glass table...” (Ozick 496).Books are everything to Ozick, and she conveys that very well in this essay.

Old Books by the Smithsonian

A Hundred Thousand Straightened Nails: Donald Hall

          A Hundred Thousand Straightened Nails by Donald Hall is about the pointlessness of life, and how it can still bring joy. Its start is quite melancholy, with the author saying, “I was always aware that New Hampshire was more dead than alive” (Hall 252). Hall recounts the life of a man he knew when he was young, Washington. Hall's writing invokes Washington's bucolic past as a hermit who could fix and build just about anything. The poetry connoisseur from the mid 1900's shows through Washington how he feels about the place he grew up. Washington lives a simple life in New Hampshire, and dies only remembered by his family. Washington has an abhorrence for wasting things, as is seen from his saving of nails, food, and even short pieces of string. The readers are presumed to not be from New Hampshire, and not know the feeling that Hall conveys, about everything around them slowly decaying. Hall wrote this piece to show a way of life that appealed to many, but few could experience.

       I believe that Hall did accomplish his purpose, because he detailed a life that was fleeting and barely remembered, but that still made Washington happy. In his final sentence Hall says, “and his gestures have assumed the final waste of irrelevance” (Hall 262). This ending is sad, but it also shows the bigger motive, of showing how the whole New Hampshire way of life has faded too. Hall uses many rhetorical devices to highlight this, but the one that stood out the most to me is the parallelism between how he told the story and how Washington would tell his stories. Washington would ramble on forever, one thing leading to another thing, and that is exactly how Hall tells his story. This shows how while Washington was gone, his small impact on the world is not forgotten, and lives on through Hall.

New Hampshire Winter by Joe Dorn

How It Feels to be Colored Me: Zora Neale Hurston

               How It Feels to be Colored Me by Zora Neale Hurston is a commentary on how the color of her skin made Hurston feel when she was a child. It recounts how it made her feel different, the same, and how it had no bearing on her character at times, depending on her surroundings. Hurston was a prominent African American author in the 20^th century, and many of her works focused on breaking the stereotypes of how African American stories were told. This is echoed in How It Feels to be Colored Me because instead of focusing on the negatives alone, Hurston shows the wide range of emotions about her skin color. She is writing for the people who do not understand the complex emotions of being black, mainly, white people. She wants them to see that she understands that horrible things happened in the past, but they have no bearing on her present choices and that she is free to do as she pleases. Hurston uses her personal voice, recounting her childhood and beyond, to show how race affected how she felt, but makes the point that it does not make her special.
               Hurston uses a lot of metaphors in this piece to get her point across. To help the notion that her race does not make her special, Hurston writes, “Against the wall in company with other bags, white, red and yellow” (Hurston 117). She is comparing people to plastic bags, each the same no matter what color they are. I think that using metaphors and personal stories, Hurston does a very good job of getting her point across. The plastic bag metaphor was what really drove it home for me, as well as the quote, “I am merely a fragment of the Great Soul that surges within the boundaries” (Hurston 117). Meaning, as different as they are individually, when they come together they are very similar.

Different, but the Same by Roger Evans