Ad blog

http://www.anenglishmanscastle.com/images/Wonderbra%2520ad.jpg

This ad gives me mixed feelings. After looking at it for longer than the average second or two it makes me a little angry. The feeling that I get goes past the obviouse sexism you can see in the ad. It makes me feel angry because some people get this idea that these ads manipulate people more than they do. Its one thing to say that ads created our idea of beauty, advertising comes from culture and influences culture so I am not ashamed to say that advertising may manipulate my idea of beauty. I have never met someone in this day and age that isnt a senior citizen that actually thinks in the way that ads like this premote.

The design doesnt really evoke any emotions although I can see how it helps to objectify by focusing on the breasts but it is a bra ad so what do you want them to do. The message makes me feel kind of angry but it is kind of funny too. I kind of see it as a joke myself but Im not sure that, thats what the add writers were going for. I would hope that they don't seriously view women in this way. The ad seems to say that if a woman is attractive, she doesn't necessarily need to know how to do other things too.

From a rhetorical and visual design point of view, it uses the qualities described in the William's piece. There is proximity in that the words of the ad are placed right above the focal point and the place where your eyes start, the woman's breasts. The lighting makes the woman the main focus of the ad. The contrast of the white type against the woman and the burgundy background make it stand apart, just as the brightness of the woman makes her stand out. The main alignment is in the symmetry of thewoman's body, further exaggerated by the lines that the bra creates. Also, the lines and the black bra against the woman's body also draw your attention to the breasts. There isn't much repetition because the ad is so simple.

A review of Seeing Annie Dillard

Seeing is the second chapter of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, the Pulitzer Prize for non fiction in 1975. It is a story starting with memories from her childhood and shifting toward her life living by Tinker Creek in Roanoke Valley, Virginia. It is about observation and how little you actually observe things as you grow older. She uses nature and its beauty as a metaphor for the beauty in life. She tries through out the story to grasp the beauty in the world. She uses people that have been cured from cataracts who are seeing for the first time as an example. They can see everything in its simplest form, in color patches as she describes it. She decides that if you were to really try to see everything in its purist form like this a normal person would go mad.
This reading is not for a lot of people. It is extremely metaphorical and I think if it were written less poetically it would be more for me and for many others. I like some of the points that the story makes. It makes you think of what we take for granted in life. One of my favorite quotes from the text is "If you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, sense the world is in face planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days." I don't know if everyone thinks like me but this line makes me want to spend a year in the mountains and quit my job.
There were many very interesting parts to this reading and she is credible to talk about whatever it is she may be trying to explain here because she won the Pulitzer prize but like I said this article is not for everyone. I felt like she was describing a really crazy acid trip through the first half of the story, and at the time that it was written I wouldn't be suprized. I feel like I am bashing an reading that I shouldn't be messing with because it won the Pulitzer but its just not my style of writing. Ive never really like entirely poetic writing styles. I like a metaphor as much as the next guy but not an entire story full of them.

Blog #1

I am a marketing major and I'm in my junior year. I plan on changing my major to real-estate though because marketing involves a lot of classes that are of no interest to me. I feel like am paying three grand a quarter for a bunch of classes that have nothing to do with what I would like to do.
I want to be in large scale real-estate management. I plan on taking the money and knowledge I gain in my career and invest it into my own real-estate ventures. I could probably do this without a degree but I feel that it will help me get a job. Although I sometimes feel like I am wasting my time and money its not all bad because if I hadn't come to OU I would have never found the amazing real-estate market that exists on college campuses.
Once I heard how much rent was down here I started looking to buy houses. The prices of the homes are just as crazy as the rent they bring in though. I ended up buying a cheap house on first st. Its kind of a dump but with a few years work I think I will be able to make a good profit. I have to room mates that pay 300 a month and I pay 500 on the mortgage. All of the money that I make goes right into the house, including some of my own personal income.
I have learned more about what I want to do after I graduate from buying this house than
I have in any of the classes I have taken. I pay no rent and Im gaining equity and building credit. I would say that everyone should buy a house for their time in college, but not everyone can get a home loan pushed through. My father had to sign on the loan, because I have virtually zero credit. I make the payments and do the improvements and hopefully we can get the loan switched into my name by my senior year.