Weekly Blog Post 4

This video is a music video of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble’s “Couldn’t Stand the Weather.” Context of the background and of the other characters in the video is very important. The video begins with an introduction of the band with their instruments sitting or standing in the rain, something that starts of the video with juxtaposition because instruments are not meant to be played in inclement weather. Throughout the rest of the video, the band remains in the rain and thunder and lightning as the weather gets progressively worse, just as the relationships between the people arguing also gets progressively worse. The other characters in the video are people with differences who are verbally aggressively fighting in front of various backgrounds such as flags, and the lyrics state “all this, we just couldn’t stand the weather” referring to the atmosphere and environment that dissimilar people can sometimes live in and no matter what they try to do they just can’t get along. For example, the video shows a sort of punk teenage girl with a mohawk arguing with her conservative-looking possible father or just other member of her community. Also it looks like what could be a cowboy from maybe Texas or somewhere close is arguing with an African American. In both of these examples, the pairs have differences between them that it is very obvious why there would be some bad weather between them even if it is not right. This happen across all sorts of people, there are often differences between people that clash and cause issues. Often times these differences we just have to accept because as Stevie says, “changes come before we can grow, learn to see them before we’re too old.” Also, when the band “gets ready for the storm” by putting their goggles on against the rain before the guitar solo, the other characters continue to create their own negative environments as the video only focuses on one at a time, just as sometimes people create their own issues instead of having reacted to something that happened to them. Stevie Ray and Double Trouble decided to use the context of being outside in thunderstorm weather to best go along with the title and lyrics of their song and to show the weather that is created between people with differences in the same environment.

Weekly Blog Post 3

Classmate link list is up and running.

Weekly Blog Post 2

This video was very eye-opening for me, in a very literal sense because of the attention it needs in order to catch everything that is introduced to the viewer. It was especially interesting to follow for me because I vaguely understand parts of how the internet works but I definitely do not know how html, xml and other text and such on the internet work. However, I use the internet every day and this class itself is largely based on forms of text on the internet in a blog. I suppose this is the case for most people who use internet, similarly that people drive cars and use gadgets that probably don’t know exactly the engineering behind it. But while a complete understanding of the ins and outs of the internet is not absolutely necessary, it’s still important to notice its impact on our world, even though some of it seems quite obvious and trivial to discuss. You can connect to people faster and access information quicker by using the internet, but that is just looking at someone taking information off of the internet. What about what happens when you put information on a worldwide network? Most people probably don’t think about what is happening to what they write and post or publish or update or whatever mode it is in. People who put information on website may have created the website with the purpose of allowing it to be accessible to the whole world. But some people do not do that with that purpose but it is still accessible. Going beyond the normal spiel that people need to be careful of personal information and so on, it is important to think about the accessibility of all sorts of information. This is important because of its consequences, not always good, on the way people are changing how they think. If someone is more easily able to be contacted by email than by hunting them down by phone or on the street then maybe it won’t be necessary to talk to anyone in person anymore. If information is more easily google-d on a person’s phone than looked up in an encyclopedia, then maybe it won’t even be necessary to remember facts anymore other than how to type. Of course, those are negative possibilities and the internet has definitely provided positive outcomes. I simply believe more people should think about the short-term and long-term consequences of something they use every day.

Weekly Blog Post 1

"Women do not always have to write about women, or gay men about gay men. Indeed, something good and new might happen if they did not."---Kathryn Hughes

I appreciate this quote because I wholeheartedly agree with it. My initial reaction and thoughts up on reading it was that she is talking about writers who draw from personal experience in their writing that often only focus on one part of themselves for that element of whatever it is they are writing. Being a woman or a gay man is definitely a part of someone that has the potential to influence all of someone’s decisions, actions, thoughts, their views of the world around them, and how they express themselves in that role. However, there is much more to a person than their gender/sex or sexual orientation. I think she also means this to say that anybody who only focuses on one aspect of their person and uses it to channel their writing through it should take a step back and look at other facets of a bigger picture. When looking at the beginning of the quotes, I noticed that she says “do not always” instead of “do not ever” which means that one doesn’t have to completely ignore those major parts of themselves but simply to embrace not only that particular part but all others that are integrated into their personality and daily lives. This is important not only for one’s own benefit but also for their audience so that the audience is also able to acknowledge another person’s differences and gain new perspectives based on all sorts of the author’s life and personality. At the end of the quote, Hughes states that “something good and new would happen” if an author did not just focus on just one part of themselves, in her example being a woman or a gay man. This means that this person would be able to learn something new about them self through their writing, which makes sense to me because often times writing follows its own path once I get going and I make discoveries about my own thoughts and my own self. In writing about a part of oneself that is yet unexamined, one is able to embrace their full individuality and differences that make them their own person.