True Confessions

Trimble's advice about 'Freshness' was very useful to me because I feel like that is one of the main problems I have in my writing. I seem to use the same wording and structure throughout my whole paper, and I need to mix it up a bit. I liked this advice because he showed you how your writing can be done and what really needs to change in order to keep your writing 'fresh.' He also said to keep the reader surprised, which I thought was really good advice. I think that that is a good way to look at your essay or piece of writing in order to make it more memorable and more enjoyable to read. I also liked the advice that Trimble gave on similies and metaphors. Those are two good ways to spice up your writing and to make it more fun, as well as more interesting.

Freshness is also important because it makes the reader enthrolled into your writing. The reader will then be more intrigued and happy reading your writing because it will come off as more interesting and fun to read. Also, with freshness, the reading should be easier because freshness also has to do with word choice and sentence structure, so that should lead to easier to read and comprehend sentences. Trimble uses many different examples of other writers and their pieces to show their freshness. This is something that all writers have to do, so it has to be very important in every piece of writing. Freshness is something that is very important to all writing, and Trimble does a good job explaining how to make your writing more fresh, and what exactly you need to do.

Presentation Blog

During this presentation by this writer, he talked about open admission and free tuition and his true thoughts and feelings behind it. He believed that it was absolutely necessary for this to happen. It was something that was in place at City College in New York and at UC in California, but they have since been replaced  with colleges that cost money to go to. He truly believed that for the largest amount of people to receive higher education, open admisssion needs to exist at colleges where there is free tuition. I do not necessarily agree with this. I agree that everyone has the right to an education, but there are people that either can't afford it, or people that don't try hard enough and don't deserve it. I believe that if there were many schools with open admission with free tuition, it would be very hard to determine which students could go there. I think the students that go there would have to be in need of serious financial aid in order to receive completely free tuition to a school that has open admission. I just think that it would be biased, unfair, and not necessarily needed.

Centraal Beheer Commercial

During this commercial, a man has acupuncture done to him in a small, sketchy building by a strange man. Once about 150 needles were put into his body, the building catches on fire. The man doing the acupuncture runs out of the building to get away and leaves the man filled with needles. The man slowly gets up and walks to the open window to try to get away from the fire. Outside the window on the ground is the firefighters with a life net waiting to catch him. The man just stands there and looks terrified and is most likely thinking "What the hell am I going to do?'' The commercial then shows the Centraal Beheer's slogan "Even Appledoorn Bellen" which means "Just Call Appledoorn", which is the name that Centraal Beheer often goes by.

This was a good commercial because it provided viewers with comedy as well as proving a strong point. It also showed that sometimes people are put in situations where they really do need help and they need to call people to help them out, which is where Appledoorn comes into play. This commercial was also successful because it was so unexpected. The commercial started about a man getting acupuncture, and then the building caught on fire, and then the man had to escape some how, and it ended up that the way to escape was a life net. This showed that unexpected things could happen and when those things happen and people need someone to call, they can "Just Call Appledoorn."

Heineken Walk-In Fridge Commercial

In this Heineken commercial, sexism is largely represented. In this commercial, a couple is giving a tour of their house, specifically their closets. The girls are so excited looking at the woman's walk-in closet filled with clothes, shoes and accessories and are yelling and screaming about it. They are represented as the typical girl stereotype being girly, dumb, loud and ditzy. This is one of the areas in the commercial where sexism was shown. Another part was with the men. When the men are taking a tour, they are only shown to his closet, which happens to be a huge walk-in fridge stocked with Heineken beer. The men freak out and are almost in tears over these beers, and seem to be acting like girls, if not making fun of them. They are not shown as the typical sterotype associated with men and beer, which would be big, manly and strong.

Another way that sexism plays a role in this commercial is that when looking at the walk-in fridge, only the men are freaking out and getting excited over it. The girls are looking at the men like they are crazy, and are never really shown the fridge let alone taken inside it. During these tours of the house, it was seperated into men and women; women were shown clothes and men were shown beer. This was interesting because it categorized both sexes into what Heineken thought would appeal towards their audience the best, since this beer is usually sold to men. In the end, the commercial came off as sexist towards women, however, towards a man it most likely came off as awesome, amazing and many other wonderful adjectives, which was what Heineken was hoping for.

Centraal Beheer Commercial

"even Appledoorn bellen" means "just call Appledoorn"

Centraal Beheer is an insurance company in the Netherlands, often referred to as Appledoorn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv750BWrUhY&NR=1&feature=fvwp

12 AT&T Questions

1. Why were they in the city alone?
2. What city were they in?
3. What were they doing with the bread crumbs?
4. Where is their cottage?
5. How did they have a phone?
6. How long were they in the city for?
7. How old are they?
8. Where are they from?
9. How did it go from night to day so quickly?
10. How far did they walk?
11. Did phone sales increase?
12. Did this make parents buy their children phones that have GPS?

Pantene Commercial

In this extraordinary Pantene commercial, a deaf girl has such a strong desire to play her violin. She is always practicing because she really wants to play that violin. Even though she is merciliessy mocked by her peers, she keeps on playing to try and improve her skill because it is something she truly loves. Throughout this whole commercial, I felt bad for this deaf girl because she was tormented just because she was deaf and she wanted to do something that she loved. I felt bad that she had to deal with this disability, but I was also felt proud of her at the end of the commercial. After her weeks of practicing and nearly quitting, she entered a competition and amazed the whole audience.

What amazed me about her performance was that her violin was so beat up from her peers torturing her and ruining her violin, that her violin would have made little to no sound, and the sound that it would have made would have been a loud, horrible sound. I was amazed by the audience, as well. The audience gave this girl a roaring, standing ovation once she was done her performance. This ovation was started by the claps of a single man in the front row. This surprised me because just by looking at her, the audience did not know she was deaf and that she was bullied, but yet they applauded her like they had seen the beginning of the commercial, or like they knew all about her life and how she got to that performance. I think this might have been part of the point of the commercial. Pantene might have been showing how it was like to live with a disability, and how people have to fight through it and shine, but they also might have been showing that people with disabilities might not be able to see the beauty, or 'shine' in themselves, so they might need the help of kind others to sow them that they can be great, and that they can shine.

AT&T Commercial

In the AT&T commercial, two young children who look to be about 8 years old, are dressed in anachronistic clothing and roaming around the city. They were dressed in Hansel and Gretel-like clothing and were dropping bread crumbs so they could find their way back to their cottage. They first arrived in the city from the subway, so their cottage must not be in walking distance. However, when the bread crumbs run out, they use their handy AT&T phone to GPS how to get back to the cottage, and once the GPS figured out where it was, the children started skipping of back home. This just goes to show how ficticous this commercial is.

This commercial is very ficticous because two young children dressed in antiquated clothing are walking around the city by themselves, and when they need to get back home, they have a cell phone with GPS all ready to go. When they got into the city, the children stepped off of the subway and looked up into the bright blue sky, but once they lost all their bread crumbs and needed to use their phone, it was suddenly night time as they were going back home, following their GPS. The night time showed the AT&T bars in lights coming from buildings, which shows again how ficticous this commercial is. Everything in this commercial was marketing; AT&T was trying to sell their product, so the commercial was very unrealistic.

FFW 9/12

I think John Trimble makes a valid point. I believe that writers are like warriors because they have to be able to make a good and strong argument to be able to have an audience believe and understand what he/she is saying. A good writer has to be able to persuade their audience on what they believe in. I also think that writers must be able to fight off critics and opposition in order to succeed. Strong writers need to be able to look at their opponents and learn from them in order to become a better writer. 

First Post

Here I am at Hofstra and I am blogging for my Writing class while I am sitting on my carpeted floor listening to Wiz Khalifa. All my friends play the guitar, and I would really like to learn. I think it is such a cool instrument and I think it would be so fun to play and I really believe it is a great hobby to have, especially if you really enjoy it. I think I would enjoy it, so I would play it and practice it a lot, especially so I could get better. I want someone to teach me how to play, or maybe I could take lessons so I can play next year with all my friends. I don't remember how to read music, however, so it will probably take me awhile to learn how to play and read music, but I think it will be worth it. I think it would be so fun to be able to play the guitar, and be able to learn how to play the music for some of your favorite songs. It would be nice if I could sing too, but I think that is a lost cause for me.