COM/WRI 212 - Blog #8

The film Memento is a psychological thriller film, which was released in 2001. It follows Leonard Shelby who lives his life through photographs, notes, and tattoos due to his anterograde amnesia. This disease makes it impossible for Leonard to store recent memories. The amnesia is the result of being attacked by two men who raped and killed his wife. Since this is the last moments Leonard can remember, he makes it his mission to find the second man, who’s name is John or Jimmy, involved in the innocent and make him pay for what he did. Memento is shot in a sequence of black and white as well as color shots. The series in black-and-white are shown chronologically and a series of color sequences shown in reverse order.

            In Memento timeline, Leonard gets a tattoo, based on instructions given to himself, of the license plate of John G. After finding a note on his person, he meets Natalie, a bartender who dislikes Leonard since he is wearing the clothes and drives the car of her boyfriend, Jimmy. After finding out about his condition, she uses it to her advantage. She get Leonard to drive a man named Dodd out of town and offers to run the license plate to help his investigation. During this time, Leonard meets with a contact named Teddy. Teddy helps with Dodd but warns him about Natalie. However, Leonard doesn’t believe him and has a photo of Teddy with the saying that he is not to be trusted. Natalie gives Leonard information about the driver's license.

The owner of the license is a John Edward Gammell, which is Teddy's full name. Confirming Leonard's information on "John G" and his warnings, Leonard meets Teddy and drives him to an abandoned building, killing him as shown in the opening of the movie. In the end, it is found out that “John G” was actually killed a year ago. Since “John G” is such a common name and Leonard always forgets memories, he always will continue his search. Leonard doesn’t believe Teddy and writes down Teddy’s license plate number, which leads to the events that happened in the beginning of the movie.  Memento is a movie full of plot twist and sequences I had no idea they were coming.

My reaction when I finally understood the movie!

            The way the movie is presented is confusing at first but makes for a really excited as well as psychological joy ride of a movie. I feel like if the movie was played out in a more “traditional” way it wouldn’t have been as good. The movie displays the life of somebody with amnesia very well to the point where it convinced me to think a certain way. While I was confused in the beginning of the movie, everything became very clear in the middle of the movie and the end of the film blew me away by the events I just watched. I would grade the film an A because it kept my attention from start to finish even if I was confused for a little part of the movie. I enjoy movies that make you think and use your mind. I believe it deserves all of the awards it has received for being such a great movie. Memento is a great movie but I recommend to watch it when you are not half asleep from your Easter brunch because it make your brain think when all your brain is thinking about is nap time.

COM/WRI 212 - Blog #7

For my unusual article, I decided to something close to home. The ghost town of Centralia, Pennsylvania has been almost entirely abandoned due to the never ending mine fire underneath the entire the city. Centralia is apart of the Columbia County.

The town was established in 1841 where it became a mining hot spot for Anthracite coal. The town officially became part of the borough in 1866. The town went through its ups and down during the early years of its creation. The town founder was found murdered by members of Molly Maguires. The Molly Maguires also committed many other murders and acts of arson during the late 1800s. The city was most populated in the 1890s with a booming population of 2,761. This allowed for the coal business to mighty well until World War 1 when the majority of young miners enlisted. When the stock market crashed and coal factories were forced to shut down Centralia branches, bootleg mines started appearing. These bootleg mines collapsed due to miners pillar robbing.

In the 1960’s, the Centralia council acquired the rights to all of the coal beneath the city and began mining once more. Two years later, a fire started underneath the town. While the specific detailed of how the fire was triggered, most people agree it was to people not following through with things and being a little lazy. People of Centralia went about their own business although there was fire running all underneath their city. Deadly carbon monoxide levels and sinkholes began appearing all around town. Members of the community did not want to leave the city until 1984.   A few years later, the governor of PA invoked eminent domain over the buildings in Centralia.  In the early 2000s, the U.S Postal Service revoked the zip code of the city.

During that year, U.S Congress offered buyouts to the residents of Centralia. While the majority of people accepted them and moved to neighboring towns, others stayed despite several warnings from Pennsylvania officials.

There are very few homes still left standing in Centralia today. The members of the community still go to church every Sunday and have town hall meetings. The remaining residents of the city have been in a legal battle for the past 20 years to determine the rights they have as Centralia residents. Finally 2013, the last eight residents settled their lawsuit to allow them to stay in their homes for as long as they live. After the last resident of Centralia passes away, the state of Pennsylvania will own the rights to all of the ghost town.

The story of Centralia is something I heard about many of times since we learn just a few hours away from the city. I also have some friends who went up to the ghost town to see it first hand. I never knew there were so many stories behind the city of Centralia. I knew the town had a fire burning underneath it but I did not know how it was started nor did I know the town did not have a zip code anymore. I also didn’t know the residents of the town were in a twenty year lawsuit with the state of PA to allow them to stay, I thought they were just allowed to stay there. The fire underneath Centralia due to the coal surrounding and under the city will burn for at least 250 years. I also learned that the city was inspiration for many books and video games such as Silent Hill and Vampire Hell due to its appearances of Hell. After reading the article, I defiantly think it was a great unusual Wikipedia page. The information of extremely helpful since it allowed me to click on items I didn’t know about like the Molly Maguires as well as whole article on just the fire.  While I could find this information anywhere because there are several books on the town, I felt like the Wikipedia information allowed me to search of information that I might not be able to learn all about within a book.

COM/WRI 212 - Blog #6

Arrested Development’s “Motherboy XXX” is the episode I watched to see product placement in a non-animated sitcom first hand. Arrested Development follows a fictional family called the Bluths. The Bluths are wealthy, dysfunctional family who lost everything and one son, Michael Bluth, was force to keep his family together.  “Motherboy XXX” is about the aftermath of Buster's losing his hand from a “loose seal” as well as Tobias looking for work in the acting field. Embarrassed by her son’s missing hand, Lucille recruits George Michael, Michael’s son, to compete in the 30th annual "Motherboy" contest with her. On the other side of the town, Tobias meets with acting coach, Carl Weathers to talk about possible acting jobs for him. The episode “Motherboy XXX” only had two product placements but they were two huge product placements.

            The first product placement is VERY obvious! Tobias meets Carl Weathers in a Burger King. They talked about how great the fast food restaurant is and how they are getting money for shooting a scene from their television show. Arrested Development is known for having running jokes throughout the show as well as tongue in cheek humor so this direct line of product placement while obvious still makes a jab at people who take product placement deals. Tobias comes back to Carl Weathers in the Burger King and true to Arrested Development nature their product placement hilarious. A sign for Burger King’s Angus Burger is in the background of the shot and with the way the shot is the “g” in Angus seems to be blocked. This makes burger not so appealing but still calls for laughs. Later within the episode, Michael, George Michael, and Buster are shown drinking out of Burger King cups just to round out the Burger King product placement. While everything is happening in Burger King for Tobias, Lucille and George Michael head off to Motherboy 30 (XXX) where another product placement is placed.

            Lucille and George Michael walk into the hotel where Motherboy is being held and see another mother son combo in sailor outfits. This causes Lucille to rent a room so they can change their outfits. While checking into the room, Lucille states her purpose for staying was Motherboy and this is where the second product placement. The hotel receptionist states that it is the mother son competition instead of the 70’s rock band with the same title. The Narrator also comments that the show is legally obligated to make a distinction between the band and the pageant. I thought when I watched the episode, Motherboy was real but after watching the episode multiple times I realized that one of the band members looks oddly familiar. I did some researching and it turned out that the band Motherboy does not exist. This scene from the episode was just a product placement on the show itself. During the pitching of the series, a band with the same name of the show sued the producers for copyright infringement. This is Arrested Development’s way talking about the issue and saying how they got through it in a funny way.

            This leads to the final but indirect product placement, which is the show’s title. When googling the name of the show, you will get multiple sources. One will be for the show but they other will be for the band with the same name. This allows for the band or the show to get more people to get more popularity because they googled “Arrested Development” and wanted to see the difference between the two.

COM 327 - Blog #3 Methods

The First World Problems meme is a tongue and cheek image of popular culture which calls on the more privileged in life to talk about their problems whether they be the barista spelling your soy milk caramel macchiato or having to plug your MacBook into its charger so it can update. As a country full of privilege no matter how much or little, there are other countries who don't have the luxuries like water or personal laptops. We as a privileged society have a Ideological stand point on the world.
In a Ideological stand point, there are many viewpoints but the main one everyone know about is the hegemonic view point. The hegemonic view point is a social control over society due to power and it is how content in which all experiences are evaluated even if they don't apply to that situation.

COM/WRI 212 - Blog #5

I watched the March 19^th, 2015 episode of “The Daily Show with John Stewart”. In the episode, Stewart spoke about Fox News reporting of the Ferguson second report findings. The second report finding stated that there was some racial biases and Fox News just wanted to the other forms of media to apologize for giving false information.

Stewart went further by talking about the Benghazi innocent and the officially released findings by the mostly republican house intelligence committee. He compared the two findings and stated that Fox News should apologize for reporting falsely on the innocent. Steward states that Fox News doesn’t hold itself to the standards they hold other people.

            Later in the show, Steward breaks the very serious news into something comical. The comical news is that the United States is buying chess players to win their first gold metal in chess in the last decade. He and his correspondent, Trevor Noah, have a little banter back and forth about why the US is buying the chess players, which is because the US wants to be better and get back at Russia. This part of the show is funnier allowing for the audience to relax and laugh at little. Stewart plays the role of typical American and they give many pop culture references during this part of the show.

            The last part of the show was an interview with Will Ferrell. This was another comical segment for the show. This had really no news content other then the promotion of Will Ferrell’s new movie “Get Hard” and reminder that “The Daily Show with John Stewart” while be no more since John Stewart recently announced he’d be leaving the show. The March 19^th episode, I watched was very content heavy in the beginning but allowed itself to shallow the episode with more comical news.

            Overall, I feel like the episode was very content and serious in the beginning and to lighten the mood, so the show brought in a comical news story and a comedy actor to make it seems not so heavy. I do believe that entertaining and comedic news is a great way for people to get their information. I have many friend who don’t watch the news but watch shows like “The Daily Show with John Stewart” to get their information from what is going on in the world. I believe Stewart has found a great balance of funny and serious in his time on television. He can deliver very serious news to the audience and make a sensible joke about the hard news. Sometimes news giving out by majority news stations is very serious and dry but “The Daily Show” gives a refresh, lighthearted version of the news. The lighthearted version of news is still countable and reliable but isn’t as dry. When news gets to serious, people tend to want to forget about how bad the world may be but will comical and entertaining news the audience will want to remember or will remember the news more due to the way of the delivery.

COM 327 - Blog #2

Monahan, M. J. (2014). The concept of privilege: A critical appraisal. South African Journal Of Philosophy, 33(1), 73-83.

The First World Problems meme is a tongue in cheek image. It was created to show the daily struggles of people who are considered to have more privileges then other people in other countries that may be less fortunate. These daily struggles include but are not limited to having to watch the 3D showing of a movie because none of the 2D showings were working for you or being hungry but not for any of the food in your house. Privilege is "

COM/WRI 212 - Blog #4

In this post, we will be having FM radio vs. AM radio. For the FM radio, I chose to do B104. B104 is the Lehigh Valley’s hit music radio station. I grew up listening to this radio station with it’s playing of the greatest musical hits from the 80’s, 90’s and now. The commercials and information given out during my 20 minutes of listening felt like I was listening to the television with no picture. There were only three and a half songs that played during my listen experience, which totaled about 10 to 11 minutes. I also noticed that one of the songs was slightly sped up to make it go faster. Sneaky, sneaky B104 but I’m a Taylor Swift fan and I know when things don’t line up.

The rest of the time spent listening was to commercials and information instead of music, which is the biggest thing about radio stations. If you look at it, I spent about 50% of my time with the FM radio station listening to commercials or information. The commercials were about selling local valley events or businesses. I noticed that the station would chime in during the long commercials to make sure the consumers knew what station they were on. The news given out by B104 was more celebrity news than nation or local news. I learned about Kylie Jenner buying a new house for her and her potential boyfriend, Tyga. Things I don’t really care about but hey people like it and consume it.

For the next 20 minutes, I listened to WTKZ. This AM radio station is a sports radio station based out of the Lehigh Valley. I enjoy listening to this radio station especially during baseball season. This was the complete opposite to the FM radio station I listened to previously. It was a lot of talking about sports with the sprinkle of weather and major traffic problems around the Valley. There were about 5 to 6 minutes of commercial and information. This is was a little over 25% of the time spent listening to promotional on local sporting events with the Phantoms or Iron Pigs. The information was entertaining to me but to someone who isn’t a fan of sport especially Philly sports wouldn’t care for it. By the end of the time, I realized why I didn’t listen to this station as much as something like B104. The hosts always say something silly about the Phillies trading or keeping certain players or getting players from other teams and I find myself shaking my head. The hosts always find the negative in everything or say something silly that leads me to believe anyone who loves sports could get a job talking about sports.

I learned something from both radio stations I listened to. On B104, I learned about celebrity news and on WTKZ, I learned about possible trading information the Phillies are looking into. Both were entertaining to me, but the information I learned from WTKZ was more interesting to me then the news from B104. I did enjoy the music on B104 since WTKZ is just a talking station. Now if there was a radio station that played today’s hits with baseball news, I would be set for life.

COM/WRI 212 - Blog #3

      Larson, E. (October 15, 2014). Raise a thick-skinned kid. Parents, 88(10), p. 72-79.

            

 The article “Raise a thick-skinned kid” in the October issue of Parents was a very silly and a no brainer when it came to the advice given in the story. The story began with the author, Elizabeth Larsen’s, son crumbled under any type of pressure he received by ANY of his coaches. The author and her husband were the complete opposite when it came to pressure as a small child, learn to use it as an advantage and grow from it. The article brought in many professional opinions about how children today having no coping skills and how they need to learn how to put their emotions into place, recover from the situation, and thrive from it. The article then gives examples on how other parents build their children’s thick skin with sharing “survival” stories from the parents past, standing up for what they believe not matter what, or not sugarcoating the tough stuff. The information proved by the story is something parents should know from when they were children. Children, in my opinion, today are too coddled by their parents and then parents don’t know what to do so they turn to getting advice from a parent centered magazine. Parents should take the information of having to deal with pressure and confrontation from the past and use it to help shape their children’s lives. 

            The reason when I choose this article in this magazine out of all the other magazines in the world and articles in the world would be because of convenience and curiosity. Parents is geared for an audience with children who are either newborn, toddlers, or children or those who are expecting children. While my mother is a parent, she isn’t going to start using these tips on her two twenty plus grown adult children. No one in my house has a child or wants one at the current moment so we are always scratching our heads when we get our issue of Parents in the mail. The magazine has no name on it nor an address. It is just a magazine that shows up at my house every month. While looking for an article to find, I came across the “raise a thick-skinned kid” story and it raised my curiosity. I have always felt like in today’s day and age, society likes to give children everything they want. While I don’t have a child myself, I’ve seen countless statuses and pictures of friends on Facebook spoiling their less then one year old on Christmas.  Parents should learn to not coddled their children as much because they are just building a wall up for some other person to knock it down and the child has no where to go to “protect” themselves. Having read the story, I was curious to see what ads surrounded the piece.

            There were 90 ads within the entire magazine.

The Parents magazine had a totally of 176 pages which mean that there was a total of 51% of pages dedicated to ads. I think this is way too many ads for the magazine. The ads would break up the stories breaking my reading to advertise Gymboree. I feel like the magazine cares more about selling you on what is in their ads instead of giving good information to read. The ads do fit the magazine with ads for parent’s such as birth control and cleaning supplies and for their children which are food like Campbells’ and Lunchables and car seats. I feel like the ads that were places in the article I read were placed there for a reason. The first ad was for Gymboree basically saying, “Hey, make sure you kid looks good.” The next ad was for Minted, which could say “Make your house the cool house to hang out at.” The last ad is for Strayer University with the quote saying, “Your success is your family’s success”. The ad were put in the article to make sure while making your child has good esteem you need to make sure that they can be proud and like you.

COM 327 - "Having to right a write a blog about a meme...chooses First World Problems Meme"

Ever have that type of day were nothing was going your way? Like pouring yourself a bowl of cereal and seeing you are out of milk or when you put on your winter jacket and your sweater sleeves get bunched up? How did those types of events make you feel? Angry? Annoyed? Upset? What if I told you, you were having a First World Problem. First World Problems are frustrations and complaints that are only experienced by individuals who are more privileged normally living wealthy countries. First World Problems are usually used as a tongue in cheek comedic device to make light of trivial inconveniences.

            I have always liked this meme for its tongue in cheek humor since I, like most people, have had problems like when we were discussing this blog assignment and I was writing notes about it, I realized something. My brand new watch I got for Christmas seemed to be getting a little dirty due to the light color of the leather wristband. I looked my wrist and sighed thinking I would now have to look up a way to clean my watch after class. Then it clicked; I was having a First World Problem.

            The first known case of a First World Problem would be from the Canadian alternative rock band named Matthew Good Band. The band came out with a song called “Omissions of the Omen” from their 1995 album Last of the Ghetto Astronauts. The lyrics of the song are “And somewhere around the world / Someone would love to have my first world problems” The song showcases how the First World Problem is something that someone who doesn’t live in a first world would rather have the problems you face everyday then the ones they have. The problems they face would be far more severe such as poverty or famine. Ten years later in 2005, Urban Dictionary added the term First World Problem into their database.

            The spread of the First World Problem meme start in 2008 on Tumblr. The Tumblr is call http://therealfirstworldproblems.tumblr.com/ and is still running today. One year later, the hashtag #firstworldproblems emerged on Twitter and from there the meme became what it is today. In 2010, blogger Jessica Hagy posted a venn diagram representation of “First World Problems” vs. “Real Problems”. In 2011, American stand-up comic Louis C.K. released his third comedy album titled “Hilarious,” which featured a skit about the extreme gap between the grievances of first world citizens living in over developed societies which he labeled “white people problems,” and the day-to-day struggles experienced by people living in countries that are considered to be of the Third World. In that same year, a subreddit was created named /r/firstworldproblems. When the subreddit was created, the image of the woman with her hand on her face crying emerged as the face of the meme.

            The First World Problems meme resonates differently with different audiences. As Americans, we see it as something humorous and relatable. Other countries, especially those less fortunate, will see the meme as a silly and stupid thing people should care about. They should care about real problems in the world like Ebola or human trafficking. Some people would state how people should "shut up" about their First World Problems. The audience this meme would work best for is an American audience. It would be catering to an audience who has all these things that happen to them such as if two of your favorite TV shows were on at the same time and you can’t decide which one to watch.

            The meme has several spin-offs such as the Third World Success, White Girl Problems, First World Problems Cat, Over Educated Problems, First World Metal Problem, 1990s First World Problems, First World Stoner Problems, and 1890s Problems. The First World Problems is a whimsical meme that allows people of wealthier countries to joke about their daily struggles, which may not be as important to the real world problems but are big at the moment for that person.

Sources:

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/first-world-problems

http://therealfirstworldproblems.tumblr.com/

https://imgflip.com/meme/First-World-Problems

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/matthewgoodband/omissionsoftheomen.html

COM/WRI 212 - Blog #2

While reading the Keystone Newspaper, the student-run campus newspaper, I found a news article that peeked not only my interest but also my emotions as well. The emotion I mainly felt was anger. The article came from page 2 of the first issue of the Spring 2015 semester and it is called “Laundry prices increase 50 cents since last year”. The article talked about the cost increase for laundry services on campus due to new technology coming to campus “soon”.

This is probably the most accurate description
of how I felt after reading the article

  The article began with the concerns of students who were unhappy about the changes in some way or another. The students equally wanted answers to the price increase of the laundry facilities around campus. The main reason is to improve KU’s laundry operations by adding Bear Bucks card readers and getting new high efficiency washers and dryers in residence halls. The article ended with a statement saying a new laundry technology initiative will be coming “soon”. 

My reaction when the machine
becomes unbalanced!

The news article was extremely bias because it was geared to making sure the university looks like it is making “changes” instead of just jacking up prices to make changes in the future. Although, I don’t live too far from campus that I could bring my dirty laundry home to wash, it is just more convenient to wash here on campus instead of lugging it home then back to campus. EVERYTIME, I do wash here it is like an endless battle with machines especially with the washers. The washers have a lip in them and no matter hard I make sure it doesn’t happen, my socks will get stuck in those devilish lips. This causes the machine to get unbalanced and not wash my clothing properly. Thus, leaving me with unwashed or soaking wet clothing. I am not the only one who has this problem, many of times I’ve gone to get my laundry and I see the person next to me in distress due to the easily unbalanced washing machines.

I truly believe in the quote “Actions speak louder than words” and the university should have done that. The washers and dryers should have been replaced with the price increase instead of a price increase with the “idea” of new washers and dryers in the future. Students, myself including, would rather see newer machines than the old machines with increased prices.

COM/WRI 212 - Blog #1

Introduction:

            I am Kimberly Koehler and a senior on her last semester at Kutztown University. My major is Communication Studies with a minor in Public Relations. I am the president of Communication Club, secretary and head of events for Public Relations club, as well as a member of Lambda Pi Eta so I am very passionate about my major and minor. My short-term goal is to have as much fun as possible in my final semester at KU and my long-term goal is to find a job in Public Relations doing what I love. While I don’t mind where my first PR job is, I would love to do PR for Disney or a sports organization preferably a baseball one. My hobbies are anything and everything Disney, baseball, fashion, exercise, music, and puppies. There are exactly 15 days until spring training and I couldn’t be more excited! Here is an accurate description of my love for dogs (as seen above). I am excited to learn about mass communication this semester since it is something we are exposed to everyday.

Reflections on Professor’s Blog:

            I agree with the blog post done by my professor because I truly believe in the quote “Nothing is constant except, of course, change” by Heraclitus. The way we receive information has changed from the time I was in high school as a senior to right now as a college senior, which is only four years. While we live in the world dictated by social media and what we post of social media, we can’t dispel it because there is a lot of important information within the meaningless posts. Social media whether people like or not is the future. It is very helpful to learn information and pass information very quickly. Anyone who tries deny social media will be surround it whether it be the use of hashtags on a commercial or a company having a giveaway contest on one of their many social media sites. While social media has many pros, it also has many cons such as people taking things way to literally when in real life people would understand the sarcasm to the comment made.