Knowledge is power, but can be greater by sharing

As i read through The Allegory of the Cave, i first thought it was telling us about fearing the unkown.  when the story began describing how learning and understanding are like turning towards the light, i realized that we all live in the dark until we are brave enough to venture out and grow.  There are periods of adjusting where we may all stumble.  However, we cannot remain in a constant state in either the light or the dark.  At some point, if you are in the light, you must go back into the dark and share what you have learned, help someone else realize that there is more to life and the world than the darkness.  Once we are all on a equal plain and not trying to rise out by ourselves or keep others in prisioned in the dark, we will all be a better people.  It ia kind of amazing to me that 2500 years ago Plato already knew what injustices the world held and how the greed of man could hurt his nieghbors and ultimatly himselve as well.  Maybe someday we could all be an inlightened people and govern our countries fairly and equally.

Vintage

I must confess that i found this paper extremely hard.  I admit that I typically find modern advertising annoying and half the time i don't even understand what the adds have to do with the products they are trying to sell.  i began looking more at the vintage advertising from the 50s and 60s.  Most of the household items were extremely sexist, but i couldn't help but find them interesting at the same time.  The culture of America post WWII and the push to get women back in the home is intriguing.  Here is the add i chose:

I found the add to get the message across, but had lots of small print i found distracting from the add itself.  Here is the link to my Twitter Account with the new ad.  

https://twitter.com/CMGemstone/status/397558055572733952/photo/1

I am going to post it on my Facebook as well and see what my friends say about it as well.  :)

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10200943618536263&set=a.1012326751998.2001468.1339891978&type=1&theater

Reflections

half way there already.  I really cant believe how fast this year is flying by.  As I look back at the past 8 weeks, it truly amazes me how much has happened and what all I (and we as a class) have already done.  Between my daughter's cheerleading, tests in my Accounting class, and already writing 3 papers, along with this blog, I wonder how I even found the time!  :)  I have really enjoyed going out and looking at others blogs.  Some of my classmates are incredible writers and have such a clear point and style.  I long to focus my own mind that way, but find that I just type and think later.  That is something I would like to work on the rest of this semester.  A personal goal if you will.  :)  I think what I have taken out of class so far is a better understanding of the MLA format.  As it has been 10 years since I last sat in an English class, sometimes I struggle to remember all that I need to know.  I do wish that MLA didn't have so many rules to remember when creating a paper.  If only my High School English teacher had helped us all understand better.  :/  oh well, water under the bridge now.  All I can do from this point on is research it online and try my best.  I look forward to what else I can gain from this class before Dec gets here and pray I retain it.   :)

Writing...finding it hard to begin

How is it that I know the direction that I want to go, have the resources to get there, but am having so much trouble getting started?  Writers block is awful!  I have read and re-read my research I have collected and have attempted an outline to get the process moving, but i am still struggling.  UHG! 

 

 Maybe the problem is that I know what I want to say, but am having difficultly with the arguement side of the assigment. Maybe I dont know what critisim will show the most and therefor am having problems seeing the other side. Maybe my head is just over capasity. Whatever the problem, I better figure it out. 

CharlieBrown...I know exactly how you feel.

hmmmm.......A Modest Proposal?

I must admit, I get satire, but I can't write.  While reading A Modest Proposal, I have to wonder how shocking this was in its day.  I wonder if anyone actually thought Mr. Swift was serious or just plain crazy.  There is plenty of satire in our modern world and it can be pretty shocking as well.  I think satire is funny.  Movies like Dogma appeal to me.  I think it takes a pretty creative person to take a very serious topic and twist it in such a way that humor somehow makes an appearance.  As I started to research my paper this week, I have found my point shifting slightly.  What started out as figuring out why sexuality has taken over American culture has evolved into Sex Sells and the Modern Media.  Why does our media/entertainment push the negative images out there and make them seem cool only to turn the next second and say how morally wrong our country is?  The more i think about, the more I want my own children to learn to respect themselves and not fall into this trap.  Where is the line when young teens are portraying sex on the screen one minute and then bashing the higher teen pregnancy rates the next.  I am still struggling to decide on the theme for my paper, but I am very comfortable with my topic.

Paper Topic

After class last night, I went home and started reading my new book on my Nook. The title is Bridesmaid Lotto and is about a NY socialite who is doing a lottery for the bridesmaids for her upcoming weeding and donating the profits to charity. For whatever reason, I woke up this morning thinking about socialites and the media/paparazzi. This lead my mind to Miley Cyrus (scary I know). Why did this young pretty girl let herself get pigeon holed into the all to familiar "sex sells" file. So I would like to write my paper on the sexual evaluation and exploitation in America in that past 100 years/victorian era forward. I believe my criticism style will be feminist and possibly others, but I will need to think on that some more.

Wow!  In so many ways I feel like my high school and english 1010 teachers have let me down!  Who could have ever thought there were so many different rules just to cite your works.  Is this reference a magazine or a movie?  Are you citing one, two, or three authors?  Does the work you are citing encompass more than one page?  Did you already reference the author in the sentence?  If so, what do you put in your citation?  

Why is it before my reading this week I didn't know the answers to any of these questions?  I can really understand Ms. Hanson's frustration with this being the required writing style for so many things when we are not really taught all the ins and outs of MLA when we first begin our scholastic writings.  To be honest, I am not sure how anyone follows all the rules completely.  As I continued though the next chapter, I began to feel overwhelmed by the rest of the rules listed for writing in MLA formate.  How do you set up the headers.  How to indent the paragraphs.  How to formate your title.  How to space your lines.  How to layout the paper and ideas.  Its so much!

As for what in the real world doesn't make sense...where to start.  One of the first problems is Corp America moving to a college degree only philosophy.  I am not putting down all those who have already finished their degrees, because I know it took a lot of work and commitment on their part; but the rest of the population are not loser because they didn't finish when they were young.  I have been told directly to my face on two occasions that I was the best candidate for a position at work and interviewed better than others, but they went with another person because they had their college degree.  REALLY!?  Yes, life got in the way for me, but that doesn't mean that I am not just as smart and capable of doing a job as someone who has a degree.  Thus why it is so important for me to finally complete what I started 10 years ago.  Second is the perception of beauty.  I am well aware that I am a heavier woman.  Society views over weight people as lazy slobs and I am neither of those things.  I do not eat sugar and junk all day long.  It is just really hard for me to lose weight.  As long as a person is healthy and happy in their own skin, why does anyone else care what they weight.  Since I have a daughter of my own, I don't want her thinking the size of her waist is all that matters as she gets older.