Three More Ads

Found this at http://ben.ezymail.com/Serv_MagAds.htm. It's an Australia ad to fight against rust on your car. The crocodile shows the fierceness of rust and inspires fear. The sheer size of it over powering the car is intimidating, but the ad suggests that the government even uses the product to inspire a sense of security, and if you like your government then this ad can be quite effective because you will believe that you are making a smart and prudent choice. After all, who wants a big, old crocodile dragon eating their car?



This ad, found at http://www.gsds.org/campaign/magazine/magazine_preview.gif , plays on innocence, sympathy, and is basically saying don't be a sissy. The image of the little girl clutching the teddy bear, with her deadpan stare into the middle distance, is basically saying that she has come to terms with her own mortality, a case which many people, even adults haven't come to terms with yet. It is also saying that by making your children organ donors, they will be closer to you. It is also telling kids that this is a good idea, tell mom and dad. Kind of makes you want to give a kidney right now, doesn't it?



This one I found at http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y14/nickshort/Absolute.jpg. This ad is showing a few things. One, that Absolute vodka has become a household name, and we all get that that is absolute vodka. The other message is very sinister. You have police with a chalk outline of where the empty vessel once was. In other words saying, who killed the bottle of vodka, we need to investigate this. This is a serious matter. It is also saying that this product is important enough to be concerned when it is gone. The ad is also saying life is short, that might be me with my outline there someday. I'd better have a drink.

Advertisement Gallery Comment

This gallery at http://english1aonline.com/media/index.html features a Bacardi alcoholic beverage ad. The scene is a bar that's crowded, with a man sitting at the bar, checking out a woman's reflection in his glass who is standing behind him, as she is checking him out in the mirror in front of him. This ad is pretty straight forward, sending a few of messages. As the man looks sophisticated, it is suggesting that sly and slick people drink Bacardi. The other message is: ladies like a guy who drinks Bacardi. And of course, it's saying that it is a social thing. So, if you want to be a sly, slick, dapper dude that gets the foxy ladies, then drink Bacardi.

Advertisement

I found this ad on http://www.theaxeeffect.com/responsibleuse.html, which shows axe advertisements that you would find on television, the web, magazines, and in newspapers. The focus of the Axe bullet deodorant spray shows many things. First, the small size of the container shows portability- it fits in your pocket. Next, it appeals to the average guy by the contents in the pockets, now displayed in the airline check bin. Though some of the contents are quite suggestive, starting with personal effects. He has very little change, a quarter and a penny showing, but out of his simple, black wallet, which shows sophistication, two bills are hinted at, though you cannot see the denomination, so you know he's not broke. Next, a fairly modern, and styled ring, that gives you the impression that he's a pretty hip guy, and a watch with a simple black leather band, and a bit of styling on the face that is mostly covered. Next, a ring of keys with what looks like a post office box key most prevalent, which suggests a need to be anonymous, possibly. And finally, the sex appeal. Three different artifacts acquired at the airport with three different girls' names and information. You can definitely trace his journey from his arrival to the airport. The first is an airline parking pass with Kate's number on it, next is a baggage claim ticket with "text me when you get back" from Tara, and then finally his airline ticket with a "come by gate number 14D" from Dawn. So just driving up to an airport and the three places ou go to an airport right away, he's got three different hook ups. I would say its not a pretty far stretch to think that the advertisers are stressing that you would be more desirable if you use their product. They are also stressing that this product will raise your self esteem, while preying on insecurity to get guys to buy the product. Wow, it comes in a spray bottle and fits in the pocket. Cool.

Cell Phones

The first article I chose was Reining in Cell Phone Use" by Derek J. Moore, of The Press Democrat, April 11, 2008. He discusses the false sense of safety people have using hand free options on cell phones while driving, namely blue tooth being potentially the most dangerous of all as there may be latent side effects concerning people's health yet to be discovered. He also suggests that hands free options don't make people better drivers, and that people will continue to be distracted while driving. Oddly enough, the law he discusses in his article does not ban text messaging, which is much more distracting than just talking on the phone.

For my next article, I chose "When Your Brain is Outside Your Car" by Dave Downey, of North County Times, March 31, 2008. The journalist discusses, with confirmation, that talking on the phone while driving is a hazard, regardless of whether you have a hands free option or not. Worst of all, it gives police the authority to pull you over for an incidental occurrence, and proceed how they see fit. Is this America we live in? Or is it some police state in one of Arnold Schwarzenegger's futuristic sci-fi movies?

This next article was very interesting. It is "The Affliction: Technology Created It" by Jose Astorga, blog in Seattle Post Intelligencer.com, April 8, 2008. Not only does he highlight, yet again, the dangers of talking on the phone and driving, but he also brings up a psychological issue he is developing that is manifesting physically, that when he gets hungry his stomach vibrates as his cell phone does. I found this to be humorous and bazaar, however, when I'm watching a movie at home and phones ring on the screen, I oddly enough reach for my phone to see who is calling. Aside from these newfound phantoms our over stressed, over worked, under payed, and under rewarded society is developing, he also mentions the rudeness factor. How it has been adopted that it is OK to interrupt people in conversation when the phone rings, or text message other people while you are speaking to someone in person. Nobody is paying attention to anyone anymore. I wonder what other kinds of psychological drama will unfold as this phenomena of the cell phone continues into the future? Where will we be as people?

This next article seems to answer my previous questions a little bit about where we are heading. It is called "Text Messaging as Toy or Tool" by Naomi S. Baron, of OUP.blog, Oxford University Press, March 25, 2008. She discusses what the youth of the world is doing with this technology that they were born into. So our future as human beings may look to be as though there is a high regard for privacy and personal space, but a want and a need to communicate with others, as long as the communication is one sided. This has a slew of pros and cons. On one hand, you have the comfort and control of privacy. On the other, you have a serious detachment from others, which is socially dangerous. A divided people is much easier to control, and though this technology in my generation has a potential of bringing us closer together and coordinate efforts, if future generations take it for granted it will serve to separate people more, and desensitize them easier. Another interesting thing in this article is since when is spying on your children good parenting? What happened to nurturing and open communication from the start so you've laid the ground work for them to trust you and come to you with their problems or questions? Yes, it is good to know what is going on in their lives, however all you need to do is listen or ask questions like the drug talk, the weapons talk, the who's your enemies talk, and who's your friends talk. It is important to teach children to be self reliant and show them respect so they don't need to rebel. In this regard, maybe cell phones will bring parents and children closer together.

The First Technological Revolution and Its Lessons

This article discusses the social ramifications of moving from either a hunter gatherer society and/or a horticultural society to an agricultural society, and the social ramifications found by moving into a more technological direction. Mankind could not be persuaded, before technology, to follow any kind of leadership because each individual would provide for himself/herself and any surplus would be shared as gifts to others in the tribe as a form of insurance so that if that individual was in need, the rule of reciprocity would prove to be a survival technique. These were the early days when man learned to tame fire. Later, ideas would lead to technological advances, giving man the ability to control water, which meant no longer did mankind have to depend on seasonal rains or careful planning in flood plains to grow crops. Instead, he could become tied to the land and bring the water he needed for his crops, livestock, and his own survival to the land where he needed it. With this technological development, came a great deal of surplus, and the necessity to protect it. Mankind not only became very superstitious around the development of this technology, as they started to pray for the well being of their crops and livestock, for bountiful harvests, and protection from those who would just move in and take it. Eventually and swiftly there was a necessity for a permanent army to protect the surplus, and a form of government to turn to to resolve these problems. This gave rise to the chieftains, where family lines with the notion of direct lineage from the divine moved in and took claim of the land and its people and all that was created of it. Permanent armies could then be established, and the economy could then be controlled by redistributing goods and retaining surplus.
This technological development gave way to this day, our newest form of slavery, where we must work to obtain money to buy food, clothes, and shelter so that we might go back to work and repeat the cycle over and over again, without a true grasp of what it is we are doing. As our technology moves more into information preservation, and we find other societies to provide our food for us, when our economy begins to fail as it is now the division between the haves and the have nots becomes quite apparent. This society, on a world level, is equal to slavery as its construct leaves individuals with nothing of our own for all we've toiled. There's no inheritance for our children as we are taxed excessively. This article highlights an evolutionary process of the social aspects of the cost of technology. What it does not say is that there needs to be revolution to balance out the power from our governments back into the hands of the people to promote a more egalitarian existence, so that we are not ruled by superstition, fear, and financial isolation brought forth by imposed social classes.

Favorite American Vacation Destinations

I watched the Disneyland and the San Diego Exhibit videos, and though it wasn't so much about traveling then, it was watching the videos that allowed me to be a time traveler of sorts, to view through this digital looking glass back in time. Thought it was one sided, whomever put the films together probably anticipated that people in the distant future would look at them and enjoy them. Disneyland offered a fantasy land escape where anything was possible, as they said in the video. The video on San Diego offered a glimpse into more reasonable economic times where fantastic things were built with very little venture capital. The world seemed a lot more pleasant and fair.

Why We Travel

The author brought up a variety of good points about the thrill and endeavors of travel. Traveling teaches us new things about ourselves and other people, allowing us to see and participate, as tourists, cultures different from our own. The experience educates us. A well traveled person is less likely to listen to their government when their government tells them they must go to war with them and fight them while the government demonizes them with propaganda, because a well traveled person may have the memory of the hospitality of those people. Though few tourists probably take the stance of a do it yourself anthropologist, I think that most people come away from the experience of traveling to a far away place with some sense of appreciation. Be it by airplane, train, motor car, or boat, and in some cases in the Midwest flying saucers, the whole experience of getting to a place while traveling is in and of itself and experience within the experience. Visiting people foreign to us stimulates our intellect, and in some cases, allows us to appreciate what we have in our part of the world.

The Tourist

The author discusses another kind of tourist: the kind that is actually interested in the culture and heritage of the place they are visiting, and pursues it with genuine interest, more akin to someone who has been bitten by the travel bug and has an almost addiction to discovering new places and learning new things about peoples and their societies. He also discusses the senselessness of travel packages or visiting the main drags of these tourist destinations as they have the same or very similar venues to what one would find in their own local municipality. Further, he suggests that they are created for the westernized traveler, and have little to do with the way of life of the locals that live in a given area in the majority of the world. Instead, he celebrates a truer traveler and an adventurer and separates this sort of tourist from the common tourists.

The Loss of the Creature

The author discusses how individuals pursue these rich and fulfilling experiences that are prefabricated by other people whom originally had the experience. In an attempt to emulate the original experience, the tourist goes through the motions of showing up at a destination to mindlessly snap a photograph, missing the whole experience other than in hindsight, for the sole purpose of saying look where I was and look what I did, forgetting that the point of experiencing anything whatsoever is to actually experience it and not merely go through the motions for a sense of social validation, proving how horribly shallow and sheep like the compulsive herd mentality of humans in general is: disingenuous, ghastly, offensive, and disgusting. Further, it is a testimony to how people need validation for everything that they do with the photograph, teeshirt, or bumper sticker to serve as witness of their synthesized accomplishment within their almost experience in commercially purchased packages of pseudo reality, the best money could buy, though it would be cheaper to just sit at home on the couch and channel surf the travel channels and record favorite spots in high definition. Just another prepackaged commodity for a TV dinner generation.

Track 3

I chose track 3: home institutionalized: life in nursing and assisted living facilities. In the first article,"Quality of Life in Assisted Living Facilities: Viewpoints of residents", the author offered statistical data that was variable on many fronts, however the most important, I thought, was concerning the correlation between the loss of Independence and the onset of depression, and perhaps the undertone of hopelessness as it was apparent the patrons of the assisted living places became acutely aware that the end of their life was nearing. The first article gives all the baseline data that one could want as far as physical and mental ability versus handicaps and mental degeneration.
The second article, "Half of Nursing Homes Come Up Short; Administrators Say Below-minimum Staffing Levels a Result of Widespread Nursing Shortage", discusses the high turn over rate in nursing homes and assisted living communities, citing that staff just are not dedicated enough. Though I have worked in assisted living and know differently, it is not the dedication of staff, it is generally a scheisty boss that will not pay you enough to make ends meet and cuts costs by getting minimal groceries for patrons, not to mention the staff is not very well screened. So you end up working with some pretty iffy characters in some cases. If they payed better, they'd keep employees, and if they could keep employees they would have ample staff to assist the patrons. These places seem to run like used car lots, where the organization itself tries to pocket as much money as possible while making employees run some gilapi into the ground and taking its patron passengers with it.
The third article was actually an interview called "Assisted Living vs. Nursing Homes", which described that new legislation is mandating that people in assisted living, once they reach a certain level of clinical need,be moved to a nursing home. Though the sentiment of this is well seen, the whole process of moving someone from an assisted living place, where they were told they could live out their life, to a nursing home to die appears to be quite abrasive and offensive, leaving patrons without a sense of security, belonging, or any means of maintaining self esteem. An assisted living environment should not be able to evict any paying patron. After all, it is kind of the unspoken hope of the patrons themselves to be able to live out their lives without the regulations of being bedridden in a nursing home. The point of assisted living places is to be able to preserve that last bit of dignity and self respect of being mostly independent. It seems as though this new piece of legislation in Iowa gives these cash cow businesses an out in their promise spoken to their patrons of being able to live out their lives.
The fourth article, "Personal Routine", discusses the importance of having a personal routine and highlights this phenomena that we all share, but gives one the impression that when we age it becomes more important, the details of this routine. The personal routine is truly a totem of independence. After all, it is a constant in our day to day when day to day can be so unpredictable.
In conclusion, these articles offered an insight into the pros and cons of assisted living and nursing homes, what the differences are, and what the dysfunctions are. They illustrate the problems of under staffing effecting quality of care, which in turn is fraudulent and should be against the law because the patron is not getting what they paid for. It forces people to sacrifice independence against their will, and puts them in a place of having to adapt or face whatever unsaid consequences that one can deduce by giving some thought to what the options may be if we were in a similar predicament. They all reinforce a key piece of advice many of my friends that are up in age liberally relay: never grow old, it's hell growing old.

House Hunting

Todd Hido has a special knack of capturing the dark side of suburbia. Its like the rundown dream of what Owens captured in its hay day. Owens captured a lighter more functional side of the suburban life, and Hido portrays the cryptic decay of dysfunction over time. It is quite striking. I relate to Hido's view of suburbia as I grew up in the rundown barrios of San Jose, but have always coveted how Owens captures middle America. They portray two sides of the same coin.

Slowly Calling the Burbs Home

Patricia Lahrmer discusses the camaraderie within the suburbs. She describes her evolution from not really being impressed with the notion of moving to the suburbs to not wanting to leave due to the close knit sense of community she found there. She describes it as a rather mundane life, however she expresses a sense of deep liking concerning the simplicity of her environment. She portrays an overwhelming sense of security of which she has grown accustomed to.
Owens, on the other hand, captures the suburbs photographically for its variety of different personalities within this culture. He focuses on the eccentricities of the people who inhabit the suburbs, highlighting their materialism in a very sympathetic manner, capturing middle America in all its glory. Lahrmer and Owens both seem to come to a similar spot in the acceptance of this bazaar and interestingly normal cultural phenomenon.

24 Hours at the Golden Apple

I found this radio program to be brilliant. It took a social fixture, the diner, and basically stood in as a fly on the wall to monitor all of the comings and goings of the patrons. It seemed as though the diner attracted all sorts of people of different age groups, social classes, and job types. The regulars seemed to be the life's blood of this public place, people from the neighborhood. It was interesting how everybody was so different from each other depending on the time of day and the age group, but they all had this common tie that brought them together in having a similar feeling about this diner being almost a home base or staging area for their day. It was peculiar that the owners and waitresses did not seem to mind that there were regulars that would hang out all day because that is something that is unheard of on the West coast.

Criteria for a Healthy Landscape

I found it interesting that Paul Groth tied in man's necessity to be part of nature as being a healthy landscape because it seems to be an innately human trait to try to distance one's self away from and justify being superior to nature and natural forces rather than to consider one's self as a part of nature. Though times are changing it would appear that people still have a superiority complex when it comes to being part of a natural phenomenon. So I suppose people can be "nifty", however in general they are very short sighted and don't view themselves as part of their own landscape, and instead view themselves as controllers or manipulators of the landscape around them.

K-Mart

I found this essay to be so very accurate as to my experience with K-Mart, though I don't tend to agree that Walmart and Target are any better as far as the caliber of customers that seem to grow from these places. They all have a flea market kind of atmosphere, except people tend to be a little more courteous at flea markets. It's very rare that I allow myself the personal insult of mingling with the unwashed masses. K-Mart: with its staff that has no idea of where to find anything that is stocked at the store, Walmart, where employees get trampled to death so that their customers can have a better position to attend a sale, and at Target the customers seem to have a sincere threatening posture- ready to run into your car with theirs at any given moment in order to get a parking spot. In light of all of this, I suppose they do have their own special, personal charm, I just have a hard time seeing it.

The Monument and the Bungalow

English 1A: “The Monument and the Bungalow” Kelinoss Wolf

Pierce Lewis’ article, “The Monument and the Bungalow”, offers the reader an insight on how to digest information gathered from observing one’s environment. He tells us of the different modalities one should become versed in to successfully read the landscape of his/her environment: the first being literature or historical documentation, the next being structures such as monuments and homes built within a given area, and to investigate the significance of architectural styles in detail to fix a timeline that can be used as a marker to take note of the growth and changes of the area.

He focuses first on the monument, which, when analyzed, gave him a wealth of information as to the possible ethnicities of people who lived in the town at the time of its construction, and it also told of ethnic groups that were not there during the construction of the monument. It also shows that the town offered many of its citizens to the military, being as the monument’s construction is meant to mark the veterans of the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Mexican War, the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, the Philippine Insurrection, World War I, World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.

He then focused on the bungalows, noting that the peaceful tranquility of these structures held stark contrast to the symbol of the monument, as these bungalows were in the style celebrating craftsmanship and the spirit of handmade quality as opposed to machine made, like the instruments of war.

By comparing just these two aspects in his given area of Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, he was able to derive a great deal of information concerning the vernacular landscape of the area. Further, by describing the manner by which he arrived at these conclusions, he also is passing the knowledge of this skill set to us, the reader, immersing us in a skill to practice and prove, for as the author has relayed in the article, that this doesn’t seem to be a common skill for Americans to possess.

Works Cited
Lewis, Pierce. “The Monument and the Bungalow.” The Geographical Review (October, 1998). 17, January 2009. .

About myself

Hello, my name is Kelinoss Wolf. I am a laboratory assistant at a local hospital in Santa Rosa. I also work part time as a handy man and am starting a farm. I am going to school to become a nurse and I am a proud father of eleven year old twin boys.