The Everyday Style of People

I don't get out very often, meaning I don't often explore other areas. I often find myself on the same path, following a routine that drives my daily activities. So in times when I find myself outside of La Crosse, I can't help but notice all of the different people and the styles that they dress themselves up in.

When I went to Chicago several weeks ago, there were so many different people with different get-ups that intrigued me. Everything seemed classy to me no matter what they were wearing. Was it because it was so different from what I'm used to? I am constantly surrounded by college outfits here in La Crosse and if I'm not running into students its usually 40 years and up. In Chicago though, it's a range of everybody and the diversity is so much higher. It's kind of weird how just a few hours of driving can completely change the dynamic of the environment in terms of people and how they dress, which is kind of a genre within itself. Fashion greatly depends on the accessibility of each article of clothing. In La Crosse, we've got the typical brands of clothing such as American Eagle, Old Navy, etc. In larger cities there are much fancier places and the people that shop there have much different budgets. For instance, I was watching a video where these famous YouTubers went on a shopping spree for each other with no budget. Between the four of them, they totaled $10,000 worth of accessories. That is enough to pay almost half of my student loans and they spent it on clothing. This was out in LA so the style there is much more expensive than that of La Crosse. When I spend $80 on pants, I cry on the inside. These YouTubers spent $490 on a pair of sunglasses and didn't bat an eye. Pretty darn crazy.

Extended Protection Plans at Menards

One of the tasks of a cashier at Menards is to do our best at selling Extended Protection Plans for specific items that Guests are purchasing. This has always been a challenge for me because most of the time I can only get "okay, so this item qualifies..." out before the Guest interrupts me with a crisp "no." You can definitely say that my skills at selling EPPs are pretty darn low and I don't think John Menard is too happy with me for that, but I honestly blame the Guests because they don't even let me finish my sell phrase before they answer. That's my excuse anyway.

What I need to do if I want to sell more EPPs is figure out a way to catch the Guest's attention right away. They typically here the phrase "this qualifies for" and they immediately reject the idea of an EPP. They're right for denying it because they can just return it and Menards will most likely honor that return. So what do they have to fear and why do they need this EPP? They don't really, it's just a way for Menards to make more money. That doesn't deter me from my mission though because them buying those gives our store a better rating which brings good things to us employees.

This gets pretty tricky because I'm trying to get someone to spend more money and that's not what everybody wants to do. I have to convince them that this EPP is going to make them sleep better at night knowing their product is covered for damages and other miscellaneous things that could happen. I haven't been able to think of anything yet, but I'll certainly need to utilize some of the tools from this course and my rhetoric courses because this requires the art of convincing others to do something they didn't originally want to do.

Web Content as a Genre

Web content is something we run into everyday. There are many different forms and styles of content on the web and each one has to deliver something unique in order to separate itself from the rest of the crowd. Yet, there's a mission for each website and in order to complete that mission there needs to be a layout that is both effective in displaying the information of that website and in getting users to do something with that site either through interacting with it or whatever it is the owner of that content needs audience members to do.

Jumping back to the La Crosse Distillery Company, you can see how their style is transferred to everything involved with the company, whether that be their menu, history pamphlet, website, etc. Everything they create fits the company's standard format in order to make sure that any piece read by a potential customer can recognize the company and its branding.

Taking a look at their website, you can see their style almost immediately. The color scheme is the same and the stories they include continue their signature theme of being local to La Crosse and the resources around this city. Their website is clean and the content is targeted to be to the point. The classy feel of the restaurant can be found in their website as well and that's how they get people to recognize them in any format.

Take a look at this page on their website and tell me that this doesn't feel fancy: https://lacrossedistilling.co/fieldnotes-gin/

The sharpness of the images and the clean/easy-to-read just drives that classy feel across. You can tell that everything they do is carefully thought of and I think that's what makes them high class.

La Crosse Distilling Company

My girlfriend, Annie, and I went to the La Crosse Distilling Company this past week for drinks and it was an awesome experience. This new location just opened up a few months ago and we wanted to see what they hype was all about, not to mention we are both fans of good gin.

What we found there was a fresh new building design that really made the place unique. It was clean and classy on the inside and you could tell simply by the water glasses they brought out. The individual glasses were pretty normal, but the water container for the table was in a bottle that looked similar to that of the gin that the company makes and sells. I could immediately tell that this place was specifically curated to fit one theme, much like other restaurants, but this one went the extra mile. Everything felt classy even the menus we received, which were made of a slab of wood and a menu rubber banded to it. It's pretty neat to go to a restaurant type business that isn't a chain restaurant and see how much more money they are willing to invest in their decor and style. You don't see stores like Subway doing that and it's because they don't have to do much to gain attention. These newer more unique businesses have to be classy in their style in order to attract more customers and I can say that the La Crosse Distilling Company did just that. They defined themselves with a style that makes people feel like they are dining in a 5 Start location and that's what's going to make people want to come back.

Billboards

Billboards are something we see frequently and they are almost everywhere we go. Just on my way to Subway for lunch today, I walked past 10-15 billboards (for the record, I'm counting store signs as billboards; image below as an example).

Taking the above example into consideration, I found it interesting how many different signs there are and how each one is unique to the store that it belongs to. I would think that the rules regarding store signs is that it has to be representative of the store it belongs to, but unique enough to stand out from the rest that surround it. So there would be a lot of things to consider such as font, color, how much text, images, what kind of content to display, etc. That's a genre I constantly think about as I pass signs and billboards.

Video Game Remakes - A Type of Genre?

One thing that I've noticed as I grow up is the number of remakes to things like Disney movies, board games, and most of all video games. Pokemon is a game that I love to play and no matter how many times I tell myself not to buy the new one when it comes out, I usually end up doing so and it's usually because of one thing: it's a remake of a game I used to play years ago. My Pokemon game playing career started when I was 10ish and it was the Fire Red and Leaf Green games that I fell in love with. I continued to play each generation after that which soon led to the remakes of older generation games. Now, in 2018, the remake of Fire Red and Leaf Green has come out and it has caught my attention immensely.

I'm playing with the idea of a game remake being a genre within the genre of video games (so I guess a sub genre) because there are rules and strategies involved with making a remake. Considering audience is important because with Pokemon, its a kid's game as well as a game that adults would play because they used to play it when they were kids (like me). So not only does it need to entertain new players, it also has to have enough nostalgia for older players to feel like they are playing an updated version of the game they used to play years ago. I'll probably end up buying the game and trying it out because I can't resist and so I hope that it lives up to my expectations.

YouTube Video Titles

YouTube thrives on views. Views are what keeps the business running by airing ads in videos that people are forced to watch through unless they pay for premium membership. Out of the millions of videos out there, what's going to draw millions in to watch your own video? This is the challenge that YouTube creators have to face when creating a video. You might have really good content, but that doesn't get display on thumbnail for the video so each video has to have some sort of creative/click-bait title that will bring a viewer in.

Click-bait titles are some of the most annoying things in the world. I'll see things like "You won't believe what happened when he did this" or "Watch Donald Trump slam this reporter." Those sound like amazing titles and I feel like I could find enjoyment from watching a video like that. Yet, when I click on those video links, I am disappointed by the end because the language of the title suggested that something cool was going to happen, when really its super scaled down when you watch the video. Trump almost never "slams" the reporters, he just avoids their questions and calls them Fake News. Is that the definition of slamming? No, I would expect something out of the ordinary or unique to that one situation, not what he does in almost every other press conference.

So there's a style here that requires certain rules to be utilized. First, the video has to actually have some sort of connection to the title. You can't just throw something random in the title just to get someone's attention. In the form of click-bait, the title has to be somewhat true, even if it is over exaggerated. Lastly, it has to be exciting enough to catch someone's attention. With all of those in mind, you can create effective click-bait material.

Genre of Sale Items at Menards

I run into this issue frequently at Menards where a Guest comes up to the register and believes that something is on sale for this price, but what the Guest misses is that the sale comes after you mail in a rebate to get the sale amount off. This is a tactic used by Menards to get people to buy something because they feel like they are saving money, which only happens when that Guest mails in the rebate form with their receipt and then it takes 6-8 weeks to get that rebate back. What's worse is that the rebate can only be used in a Menards store so really Guests are saving money at all. They are just keeping the money within the Menards circle.

I define that as a genre because it's a type of writing that only exists within retail stores. The language is carefully chosen to get Guests to think that they would be wasting their time to fill out this rebate and then wait 6-8 weeks all for $1. It's clearly written, but it's worded to sound like a lot of work so the rebate dies away and Menards still makes money. So are you really saving Big Money at Menards? The only saving Big Money is John Menard and he has PLENTY of money as it is.

Ironic?

This random thought popped up in my head the other day and it was about irony. Would it be ironic for someone to be killed by an ambulance? I would argue that it would because irony is about what you expect to be the opposite of what happens. In this case, you would expect the ambulance to save someone, but in this case the ambulance actually killed someone. So if my definition is true, then yes it would be ironic to be killed by an ambulance. However, it could also be seen as just bad luck, but because it is specifically by an ambulance, then I would think it's irony. That's my thought process anyway.

Video Where Trump faces Reporter

A pass time of mine is watching Donald Trump face off against reporters. He has long been someone who stands against the media and has managed to turn a large portion of the United States population against the media as well. So I find it kind of fun to watch him battle against reporters and watch him stumble on his own comments. A lot of what he says seems hypocritical and it seems to undermine his own arguments/beliefs. For example, in this scene where he faces off with a CNN reporter (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDQPPBRW2ik), Donald Trump makes some comments about the reporter that he himself often displays [00:02:02 - 00:02:10]. He calls this reporter rude and claims that it's not okay to be rude to others, but by doing so he is in-turn being rude to the reporter by cutting him off, not answering any of the reporters questions, and by saying that this reporter's work is fake news. There's clearly some hypocrisy here and I don't know if Donald Trump is doing it on purpose to divert the attention away from himself or if he is just not that smart.

My Symposium Findings

I unfortunately didn't get to stay for the entire session of the Symposium that I attended, but I did manage to catch one of the speakers. They had written a story that was about their favorite memory. The speaker brought us back to this special moment and provided the best detail that they could. This memory, to them, was something of value, but to us we had no connection to it which the author had to develop in order for her audience to understand why that memory had value. In order to accomplish this, she had to rely on metaphors and other figures of speech so that we could find some sort of relation to what she felt through our own examples of what she was describing. By the end of her story, I could kind of grasp the importance of this memory and while she described it to us I tried my best to relate a memory of my own so that I could fully comprehend the importance.

There’s a little bit of a challenge in presenting something like that to a crowd of people you most likely don’t know. How do you prepare something like that and get everybody on board with what you’re trying to describe. Not to mention, these were ENG 110 students, so it was most likely the first time they presented something like this to a crowd of strangers; I can imagine the nervousness of trying to attempt something like this. Nonetheless, this speaker did a phenomenal job and while I could understand the value of this memory to her, I could also go back into my own memories and find something similar which was pretty neat and reflective.

I have one pondering question in relation to the genre of this student’s writing. Because they are just starting their college career at UWL, I wonder how much of this piece remains true to the style that they used all through high school. Has this course changed anything in their writing or are they still utilizing the tools that they’ve used for most of their writing? I don’t think I would be able to pick that up just by listening, but it would be interesting to see how their writing evolves from this one moment to the time when they are close to graduating. That would be the only way that this style of writing would be limited, but I don’t think that’s a journey they will take to understand until they take ENG 313.

Magic the Gathering

Magic the Gathering is a card game that I play once in a while with some friends of mine. It's a game of creatures and spells with a goal of defeating the other player's life points. This game has been around for a long time and it continues to produce new cards, rules, etc. This game is always evolving which makes me think it's going to last for a long time.

Something that I found interesting about the game can be found within the cards. Each card has an ability that you can cast against your opponent and the wording of that ability is very unique. For example, a card might say "target opponent loses 3 life" and another might say "at the end of your opponent's turn, cast this spell for 3 mana to draw a card," etc. In order to fully understand Magic and the cards that come with it, you have to be able to read the wording of each card carefully and interpret it correctly. Some of the cards have vague instructions and it comes down to the player to fit that into the game. An annoying one that I run into frequently is when someone's card lets them activate an ability at the end of an opponent's turn. My friend Ethan would do this to me a lot where I would say "my turn is done" and he would respond with "before your turn ended, I activated this card" which technically wasn't true because he had said that after I had already declared that my turn was done so he couldn't have done that, but because Magic plays off the cards and happens instantly, it really becomes an after thought or rather explanation of what had happened.

It's kind of confusing, but the language that Magic uses is very specific and you have to be familiar with that in order to understand what's going on in the game. In a way, the text on these cards serve as its own genre which is pretty neat but also pretty darn annoying.

GIF Conversations

Have you ever heard of a GIF conversation? I'm not sure if they are a prominent thing, but they sure are interesting and I love engaging in them. My group of friends and I all share a chat and we frequently rely on GIFs to continue a conversation. Sometimes it's an occasional GIF here and there, but sometimes the entire conversation will take place only using GIFs. I tried to screen capture some examples from my phone to represent what I mean, but I was unable to do so, unfortunately.

GIF conversations are pretty neat because there are some rules and expectations in play in order to use them effectively. In order to use a GIF in a conversation, it has to fit properly. For instance, you can't be talking about video games and then drop a GIF about a panda swiping a ton of stuff off the table. Well, that could actually work if you used it right, but you get the point. The GIF has to be able to carry on the conversation and be relatable, otherwise it won't be received well by the other end of the conversation and you might look like a fool.

The GIF also has to make sense in order to use them correctly. If you drop in a GIF that references something and the other person doesn't understand it, then the GIF is lost on them and the conversation will either stop or awkwardly continue. This is kind of a hard thing to do because typically the GIF relies on the words that are scripted onto it, but there are times when you're mostly focusing on the reference that the GIF is making and that heavily depends on if the other person knows what you are referencing in order for it to play out smoothly.

Lastly, you don't always want to use GIF conversations. It's definitely one of those things where you want to use it sparingly so as not to bog down the conversation to only using GIFs for a long period of time. Sometimes this works out perfectly and you and your conversation partners are able to pick out the perfect GIFs to make a conversation happen, but most times that doesn't work out. Not to mention searching for the right GIF can be difficult and can make people not want to respond after a while. So there are plenty of rules and expectations to keep in mind when using GIFs in a conversation and I think that alone makes GIFs and interesting form of language.

Disruptive Public Art

I'm not an artist by any means and so when I started thinking about this project, I had no idea what to do. When we received our first snow fall that actually stayed for more than a few hours, I got the following idea:



This is located right outside of my apartment building on the side walk that receives a decent amount of traffic. What is written in the snow is the following: "Snow does not equal the negation of Global Warming's existence." There are some squiggly lines around it and a cloud to the left.

Like I said, I'm not the greatest artist in the world, but I think there is some meaning behind this art. As our world faces the consequences of global warming, there are many who believe it exists and many who do not. It's definitely a tough thing to notice because it spans over time and obviously we weren't around to see what it was like a thousand years ago. Yet, there is plenty of evidence that shows global warming's existence if you're willing to look a little bit harder at the world around you.

Snow is one item that non-believers use to prove that global warming doesn't exist. To them, snow wouldn't be possible if the Earth was getting warmer and so when the snow comes down in all of its glory they claim that global warming can't exist. However, that is not the case and it has been proven to be so.

I think this piece of "art work" is disruptive because it's in an area that people walk by and it takes a stand on a serious topic. It's straight to the point and doesn't leave room for interpretation. It's also putting my opinion out there, even though it isn't signed, it will make people think about the topic and layout their own opinion on the matter.

Now, there's nothing really tricky here, language wise. I interpreted the point of this assignment to use language to be disruptive in a way that is obvious rather than trying to make people think too hard. The only thing someone would need to know in this instance would be the symbol in the top row to mean "does not equal" while the rest of the art is easy to interpret. I suppose, however, that the audience would need to know of the existence of arguments that claim snow to be the evidence of global warming's non-existence, but other than that I can't think of a reason why someone who walked past this wouldn't understand the message inscribed in the snow.

Improvement wise, I was thinking I could have used some sort of color to outline the text in the snow, but I didn't really have anything that would be environmentally friendly to lay down so I decided to just use the element that was provided to me and that was the snow.

The symbols around the snow don't really mean anything in particular. I originally had just the sentence in the snow, but then when I asked for feedback on it, a friend of mine said that I should draw something around it so it would appear more art like. My goal here then was to just add something to make it more art-like, but someone might be able to take the curvy lines to represent heat which would be relative to global warming and the cloud to the left could mean something, but I didn't have any intention behind it when I put it there.

Overall, I think there is a powerful message behind this because it's out in public and it challenges people to think about global warming and how we take our winters for granted. With that said, my work is done here and now everyone believes in Global Warming...right?

Examples of Figurative Language

I managed to find some examples of figurative language in several songs by one of my favorite artists. His name is Garrett Borns and he has some decently famous songs. One of them, called "Electric Love" has a phrase throughout the song that goes "baby you're like lightning in a bottle" which would be a simile. He has several of those throughout the song and I was mostly able to find only similes, but I find it interesting how music writers lean on figurative language because all we can hear are the words of what they are singing but we capture none of what they are imagining when they write those lyrics. So not only do they have to sing in a beautiful melody that makes us sing along with them, they also have to be able to inscribe some kind of imagery and that comes from the use of figurative language.

The ability for artists to place a message within a song is also something that has been prominent through the ages of music, especially nowadays. Music can serve as an opportunity for an artist to lay out their thoughts, opinions, or beliefs to the public without receiving too much backlash because only those who understand the lyrics well enough will be able to understand what they are trying to say. Songs created by Beyonce, such as "Lemonade," or by Cardi B, such as "Money," have some value behind their words and they resemble a story of sorts. They all use figurative language in someway to describe where they are coming from and what they mean by their lyrics so that we as an audience can understand them and create an image of what they are telling us through their voices. It's a pretty interesting way to use figurative language.