What is Comedy?

I truly believe that laughter is the best medicine. Laughing at things that are sarcastic, or laughing at things that are just plain humorous often brings the question to mind, just what is comedy? How can someone find something so not funny to you completely hilarious? My video that I found on You Tube takes a humorous approach to this very question. As I just stated the purpose of this video is to provide entertainment to the viewer, and make some sort of witty attempt to identify the different types of humor that people find amusing. The focus for me is on the man falling. Throughout the whole video I remain focused on the charismatic little man. When he didn’t appear on the scene I was questioning what was happening, was he still falling, was he going to keep falling forever, would he die if he hit the ground? When he was on the scene I was watching what he was doing and how his actions were related to what the writing just shown had said. I think that the fact that there are no spoken words adds a certain element to the video. This along with the lack of color make the video appear as if it were an instructional video from the ‘40s. The background music also adds an old fashioned sense of humor to the video like the “I Love Lucy” shows. If you don’t pay attention to or understand the meaning of the words during the video, you will totally miss the humor of the whole video. This is a good example of how important written words are to a video, usually when you watch movies or videos you only pay attention to the spoken words, but this makes you realize the importance of written language. Whatever your personal classification of humor is, enjoy the video, and have a few laughs!

Blog Post 4

When looking for an image to post into my blog, I stumbled upon this image of the island Capri, off the coast of Italy. I knew that I had to publish this image, because it brings back many memories to me. This summer I toured Capri with my classmates as part of our senior trip. Looking at this image brings back the memory of the wind blowing through my hair as the boat zoomed around the island. My lips and face were crusted with a fine film of salt from the blue green water, and every time I licked my lips, an unpleasant taste filled my mouth. The sound of seagulls cawing mixed with the baritone voice of our tour guide as he pointed out various places of interest around the island.
The sun was hot, but the breeze coming off the water kept us cool as we rounded the island and spotted one of the most famous attractions in Capri, the Faraglioni, which are the three rocks shown in the image. As we sailed through the cavity of the middle rock, a sense of awe filled me. It became clear to me the amazement that the ancient Romans must have felt when they first came to find this island. The tour was over all too soon; as we climbed out of the boat I was tempted to go back and pay for another tour, just so that I could experience the beauty of the island all over again.
Today it still fills me with a sense of bewilderment when I see images of the beautiful island. To think that I was there once will never cease to amaze me. Those memories that were made there will always be with me; the feel of the island, the sights and sounds I will always remember. It’s a very cool feeling to look at the stunning images like the one that I have posted, and say, “Hey, I’ve been there!”

You Tube Blog Post

The video that I chose, Foux de fa fa by Flight of the Conchords, has several important details. The most obvious detail in the video is that very little of it is spoken in English, most of the video is in French. The first time that I saw this video was in my French class, and the more words that we learned in French, the easier it was to understand the hilarity of the video. If you don’t understand what they are saying, while it is a very funny video, you will miss many of the humorous things that occur. For example, at the end of the video the dark haired girl asks the man with sideburns “parle vous francais?” (Do you speak French?) and he says no, even though he has been singing in French for most of the video. This is just one example of how important spoken language is to the video, and how it enhances the quality of the video.
Another important element in the video is the focus. I am drawn to the guy with the sideburns to me he appears to be the main character in the video. Even when they are at the supermarket and he isn’t talking, he is still the focus in the background and his presence adds to the overall image of the video.
An additional detail that helps to complete the music video is the way that they make all of the colors brighter and more exaggerated when they start speaking French. The fact that they keep repeating phrases over and over make the tune catchy and also help you to understand what is happening in the video, even if you don’t speak French. Even though this video is intended to entertain it has elements that allow it to be educational, such as repeating phrases, to help learn French, it also has artistic elements, changes in color, that make this video much more than just entertaining if you study it. When I first watched this video in French class, it never occurred to me how it could contain so many different elements in just a simple video.

Blog Post 2

Diagrams, such as the one that I have chosen, are a representation explaining a concept using pictures. Diagrams can help people to learn through using visual techniques. As a visual learner I find that diagrams often help me to better understand the concept of things.
The diagram that I have selected would help students in science and horticulture classes to understand the parts of the flower and where things are located. This diagram would be a very good learning device to use. It would be easier for me to understand where the different parts of a flower are using this diagram, rather than listening to someone telling me where they are at.
This diagram was originally on a site designed as a reference for biology students and teachers. Since I took it out of its original context, it changes from being the subject of research to the subject of discussion. Before I took it out of the research web page, it served as a tool for learning, it was the subject of research. Now that it is on my blog, it has become what I am referring to, the subject of discussion. As a writer who has borrowed this particular diagram, it is always important to cite my sources. If you were to look on the web you could find many different diagrams of a flower, but the one that I have on mine came from http://www.kensbiorefs.com/.
All of the main parts of the flower are labeled, so that the student, reader, or onlooker, can clearly tell where they are located. I wouldn’t have labeled them any differently, and I don’t think that there is a way that I could without changing the meaning of the diagram or making it inaccurate.
Diagrams, themselves, provide a good way of learning something. Writing, by itself, also can provide a good way of learning. Once you put the two together though, you have something that can provide a much deeper understanding than the two things by themselves.

Blog Post 1

The Essay as Action

"Beneath the object, the physical piece of writing with its unpredictable content, is the action that produced it.....yielding to the simple desire to tell - identifies the essay." (Atwan 23)

-Ian Frazier

I chose my quote by Ian Frazier, because I like the way he states it. That beneath the writing “is the action that produced it.” Before I read this quote, I never considered an essay to have action. Whether writing or reading an essay, I always pictured someone, bored out of their mind, just sitting there trying to get through this familiar, tedious assignment. I like it, because it makes an essay more than just a piece of writing or that tedious assignment that your teacher gave you. It made me think about how I as a writer, needed to convey to the reader the action that went on, the thing that inspired me to write the essay. It also made me think about and reconsider the essays that I had previously read. Where was the action? What made the writer pick this certain topic?
I agree with what he wrote. Thinking back to writing essays, there was always a time that inspiration would strike me, that was when I knew what I would write about. Those times were always action-packed. Whether I was out doing some physical work when inspiration came, or the action was me sprinting to my computer in order to get my thoughts typed up, writing an essay always involved action. I think that action occurs in the essays that I have read I just haven’t been aware that the action was there.
One thing that I can take from this quote is to look at essays with a different prospective, a more analytical prospective, and try to find the action of and in the essay. I will also try harder to convey to my readers the action beneath my essay, to move them through what I am saying. Hopefully they will feel the action that moved me to write about the subject. In feeling that action with any luck, they will be able to better understand why I wrote about that particular thing.