Freedom is Always Worth the Price-Due Sept. 23

With John McCain supporting the war in Iraq and Barack Obama wanting to bring our troops home, there are many mixed feelings about our presidential candidates among fellow Americans. In this particular video, it features a veteran of the Iraqi war. Inspiration is one word that describes this short campaign video for John McCain. This soldier obviously is a strong supporter of McCain, and this video proves how important it is to vote for the right candidate for the upcoming election. The man states that he was in Iraq for twelve months and has seen the sacrifices made for the people of Iraq. According to him, the war is not full of mistakes as many people think. He gives us an insider’s prospective of the Iraqi war. Because the people of Iraq are like us deep down, he says that they want to live in a “secure world” with freedom from the laws that currently tie them down. Confidence is in his voice when he asks “Are they better off than they were in 2002? You bet.” He used very good comparisons that make the person watching the video really think about their views on the war. By asking if one would save a fireman who was going to save a child, he proves a good point. Why take our troops out of Iraq as we are starting to make a difference there? Wouldn’t we rather have our troops over there helping their country rather than have the bad people of their country come to America and start a war? The best part of the video is when the music starts to slowly get louder, and then he turns to walk away. No more is said about him being a soldier, but you can tell that he made a sacrifice. The little limp and prosthetic leg says it all, and I admire him for what he did for our country.

McDrama

Many people have heard of the popular ABC series Grey’s Anatomy. It’s getting ready to kick off its fifth season on Thursday, September 25, at 8:00 PM. For those who are not familiar with this spectacular television series, it is a show that has been packed full of drama since the very first episode. The setting of the show is in Seattle Grace Hospital in Seattle, Washington. When it began, it mainly revolved around the five new interns at Seattle Grace: Meredith Grey, Cristina Yang, Izzie Stevens, Alex Karev, and George O’Malley. That was the start this hospital’s romance of hooking up and falling in love. The whole show revolves around the love-hate relationship between Dr. Derek Shepherd and now Dr. Meredith Grey. In the first season, Dr. Shepherd was married and had an affair with Meredith. Since then, he has divorced his wife and had an on-off relationship with Meredith Grey. Over time, Meredith and Derek have dated other people, but they always wind up falling for each other again. In the last episode of season four, Meredith and Derek are together on land that Derek owns. There is an outline made of candles in paper bags of a house that Derek has wanted to build, but he only has intentions of building it to settle down with someone like Meredith. In the last part of the episode, the audience sees Meredith and Derek them touring their “house.” When Derek realizes how much he truly loves Meredith, he tells her to wait there because he has to go do something before they go any further. He doesn’t directly tell her, but the audience knows that he has to go tell Rose, the nurse he has been seeing, that he no longer has feelings for her. The writers of the series left the audience hanging on that last Meredith-Derek moment, and that is why season five has been greatly anticipated. Will Meredith and Derek finally be together forever, or will something go terribly wrong like usual? Tune in to ABC Thursday at 8:00 for the two-hour premier to find out; I know I will!

Total Eclipse of the Heart

This video is meant for entertainment purposes. One watching this video can tell that they were doing this video for fun. They knew the words pretty well, so that was definitely a good thing. The song they sang is from the Disney movie Aladdin.
They did not have a lot of visual effects. A good visual effect they had was during the first chorus when the guy singing the male part pulled out an inflatable globe to represent “A whole new world.” The guy who sang the female part tried to act in character. He did some movements, like trying to twirl his hair, that related to that of a girl. Their arm movements were big, and they tried to move around on the screen some, but since the camera didn’t move, they didn’t have many places to go.
The video does not appear to have been edited. It looks as though they may have rehearsed it a few times, and then once they recorded it, they kept it as it was. I cannot know this for a fact, but it is my guess because there are moments that show this, like at the very end when they think it is done recording, so one of them walks back in where the camera is and starts laughing. I assume that they either used a camera propped on a shelf or a webcam on a computer to video their clip.
The meaning of the song is about love. It is hard to convey this message with two guys, one singing a guy part and one singing a girl part. They didn’t try too hard to get this message of love across to the viewers. There were a few times in the video where the one singing the girl part would bat his eyes at the other, but that was more comedic than romantic to me. As I said before, I don’t think that the two guys doing this video were really trying to create a romantic scene; I believe it was two guys bored in their dorm room, so they decided to make some people laugh.

Diagrams

The diagram that I chose would help someone trying to learn more about volcanoes’ structures. The picture of it uses different colors to represent the different parts of the volcano and the substances that make it up. There is text on the diagram; each section of text is connected to the part of the volcano it is describing by a straight line. Even if a paragraph descriptively tells how the volcano works and explains its parts, a diagram gives the reader a better visual of what the construction of the volcano looks like. It helps someone who is reading it to mentally put things where they belong on the volcano. That is one way making a diagram may help one when before writing. If one would make a diagram before starting a piece, it could be helpful organizational tool. Or, if one includes a diagram in his or her writing, it may help to get the point across by showing the reader something visual, just as a speaker may have a visual aide when presenting a speech. When a writer is writing, he or she may not be able to explain the topic as a speaker can while giving a speech. Speakers can talk with their hands and make gestures; however, because pieces of writing can be understood differently, writers must be concise. If they include diagrams in their writing, they can use them to help readers visually absorb the information they are trying to share a little easier because they are not standing physically there in person to explain themselves. This is why diagrams need to have some sort of a focus. Whether it be used for organization or visual. The diagram of the volcano is visual. I’m not completely sure what this all has to do with writing. Like I said before, diagrams can be helpful when starting to write. They also may help the reader understand a concept better, so maybe that is why our teacher Josh Ware had us write a three hundred word response.

Blog Post 1

"The essayist does what we do with our lives; the essayist thinks about actual things. He can make sense of them analytically or artistically. In either case he renders the real world coherent and meaningful, even if only bits of it, and even if that coherence and meaning reside only inside small texts." (Atwan 24)

-Annie Dillard