Status Update

Transmissions from Camp Trans
1.) Claim- The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival provides a great opportunity for women to bond with each other, while enjoying a relaxed and safer atmosphere that is created by the absence of men.
2.)Classical argument


Dark Webs Goth Subcultures in Cyberspace
1.) Claim- Online communities are not trying to take the place of or misrepresent the real world, but instead they actually contribute to keeping different subcultures alive and supplementing them.
2.)Rogerian argument


The Truck Stop as Community and Culture
1.) Claim- The similarity between truckers and cowboys runs deeper than clothes, but is also proven through other shared characteristics.
2.)Toulmin argument


House for the Homeless
1.) Claim- The homeless are very similar to the author, and cannot all be generalized and thrown into the category of being uneducated. They all have various reasons for why they are homeless and the major reason lied not in the problem of unemployment but mainly in the need for self-reliance.
2.) Classical argument

In my paper I am currently still in the process of doing research to learn more about my subculture. Unfortunately, I have chosen a subculture that is not too willing to speak with me and give me more information about the subculture. This leaves me only with the option of relying mainly on literature analysis of previous research done on the psychic subculture. I still have to find the social norms, beliefs, and values of the subculture. Since I have not found out what these things are I have yet to develop my claim. At the peer review group I would like to know if I'm developing my claim in an effective way, and also other ideas of a potentially better claim to make about the subculture.

Fieldsite Study

I nervously walk into Psychic Readings by Amanda, with the foolish mindset that television has influenced greatly, thinking that when I walk in I will hear someone say "I've been expecting you". As I step foot in the door and take a look around the first thing I notice is a prayer session taking place. Both the psychic and the client are down on both knees next to the "reading" table, with the spiritual advisor leading the prayer. So as not to disturb the session, I remain quiet and inconspicuous while I observe the environment. There are lots of celestial pictures decorating the four walls and the aroma permeating the air smells of aromatic candles. I observe a lot of pictures of single eyeballs that are blended in with other images, it can be described as being analogous to the hidden image games placed on the back of cereal boxes where they ask you to see how many of a particular image you can find. There are a few shelves that contain different types of candles and also things for sale that are supposedly to rid clients of their bad luck or evil spirits. I also see tarot cards and different types of crystal balls which are props that are used to read people's pasts and futures. By this time the spiritual advisor is now aware of my presence and proceeds to head over in my direction. She asks me if I would like a reading done, and I tell her that I am just there to do an assignment for my college English class. At this point, she displays a look of disinterest and is clearly apathetic about my needs to complete my assignment. She then tells me she is not interested, and I walk out very slowly and reluctantly just to irritate her as much as she had just irritated me. As I walked back to my car, head hanging low ashamed for some reason from my rejection, I searched my thoughts for an explanation. The only thing I could come up with was that she must have been a fraud, a scam artist, a preyer. And as I thought of these reasons for why I was rejected, I made sure I yelled every explanation that I had come up with aloud to her at the top of my lungs before I proceeded to get in my car. Then I realized that she had actually helped me find another focus for my paper...PSYCHIC SCAMS!

Act V

1.) What makes this a good fieldsite?

The actors are playing the role of a man who is "pondering a violent crime and its consequences" when they are actual violent criminals themselves who are living out those consequences.

2.) What observations does the author make about the subculture to give us a better understanding of it?

The background information about the prison actors, pre-performance rituals,

3.) What interviewing techniques does the author use to help us understand this subculture?

He asks the inmates how their prison surroundings influence how they play their parts in the play and also to compare the character they play to life in prison.

4.) What are the norms and values of this subculture?

Understanding the character that they play and what the lines actually mean.

Psychics

1.) Dziobek, I., Rogers, K., Fleck, S. In search of "master mindreaders":
Are psychics superior in the language of reading the eyes?
Brain and Cognition 58, p. 240-244, July 2005.

2.) Maxwell, L.F. Small Mediums at Large: The true tale of a family of psychics. Library Journal 129, p. 95, 1 Nov. 2004.

3.) Evans, RD., Forsyth, CJ., Foreman, RA. Psychics accounts: Self- legitimation and the management of a spoiled identity. Sociological Spectrum 23, pp. 359-375, Jul. 2003.

4.) Josephson, BD. Scientists and psychics. Scientific American 288, p. 15, Jun 2003.

5.) Schwartz, SA. Lives of the psychics: The shared worlds of science and mysticism. Journal of Parapsychology 65, pp. 421-424, Dec 2001.



The psychic culture to me seems like it would be a really interesting phenomenon to research. It is something that I really have no knowledge of and that I think would be beneficial to learn some things about the culture and also the people that the culture is comprised of. I enjoyed reading a little bit of Psychic accounts: self legitimation and the management of a spoiled identity, because it talked about the real experiences of real psychics. They discuss how they got into this occupation and discuss what it's like to be psychic. My interest in this subject partly comes from being able to research and discover whether or not this is real or not. Before having to do this assignment, I was skeptical about whether or not people could really predict things that would occur in the future. Now that I am researching the topic, I will be able to find the answer to my question.

Pirandello

Pirandello was born in Girgenti, Sicily in 1867, to a wealthy father. He got his start, at age seventeen, when he published his first short story in the newspaper (Jewinski). He was a teacher, critic, and fiction writer. He began his writing career as a poet, in 1889, when he published the poem "Joyful Pain" (Jewinski). Not until later in his life did he become a playwright. His work showed that he seemed to have a very dark and negative perception of life and of human nature. This dark perception of his view of life was thought to have come from the hardships he had faced in his own life. Some of the problems Pirandello had experienced in his life were issues with his wife's health, World War I, and his father's financial dilemma. In an effort to rehabilitate his wife, she was placed in an institution for decades because of her severe mental health issues with paranoia. He struggled during the time of World War I because of the fact that his two sons were enlisted in the army during this time. In 1903, when Pirandello was thirty-six, his wealthy father went bankrupt from his support of Pirandello's "elegant literary style of life" (Hornby). These personal difficulties not only sculpted his view of life, but also aided him in making himself a well-known author. His wife's mental health problems inspired his play "Right You Are (If You Think So)", which was the story of two women, one of which was mentally ill (Hornby).

The Scoop on Tricia Rose...

Tricia Rose is quite the advocate of hip hop culture and of the African-American race as a whole. Her literature seems to be mainly focused on one of the two topics, or even both of the topics combined. She has written three books, Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America, Microphone Fiends: Youth Music and Youth Culture, and Longing To Tell: Black Women Talk about Sexuality and Intimacy. Along with these books, she has also written numerous articles that have appeared in black culture magazines. Her credibility is well-developed due to her extensive experience with writing about the African-American race and culture.


To find this information about Tricia Rose I searched the internet for her background information. I first typed, in the search engine, books by Tricia Rose. I wanted to know what other books or different types of literature that she had published besides the one book of hers that I am familiar with. When the results showed up, I went through all the books that were listed as being written by Tricia Rose and read the brief description of them. By reading the description of her other books, I was able to see a pattern in her writing style and the types of things she
wrote about. Next, I just typed her name into the search engine. I wanted to see what kind of other information would show up about her, regarding other things she had done in her life. Among the results from this search was her biographical information. This included the degrees she had obtained and a brief history of her works of literature and how she got her start.

An advantage of looking in the places that I searched is that it was convenient and it didn't take much time for the results to appear. A disadvantage was that the results that I found were not written by Tricia Rose herself, so there is no way to tell what information I found is actually true.

Black Noise

Black Noise is a book that was written by a woman who had grown up in the era where hip hop was just emerging. The author, Tricia Rose, has written several articles on black culture, rap music, and contemporary pop culture. Her credibilty comes from her extensive research that she has conducted about the culture and the music. The fact that she has observed the culture firsthand from when it first began to develop to modern day hip hop, also adds to her credibility. Her fascination for hip hop is what drove her to follow it so in depth and for so long. She became an expert on the culture, despite the people that doubted that hip hop would be around for so long and wouldn't just be a passing phase.

In her book, she analyzes hip hop music and the artists that create the music. The different ideas that the artists use to create their music, are pointed out in the book. She talks about the contradictions that rappers make against their beliefs and also the things that the strongly stand for. I think this book may be interesting because she points out the beauty and creativity that rap music displays. I am a part of the hip hop culture myself, and it is nice to have someone speak positively about the culture. Most of the time, literature written about hip hop culture is negative and suggests that it is not real music. Rose, however, digs deeper into the culture and takes into consideration the many elements that hip hop is comprised of. Another reason I may be interested in reading more of the book, is that she summarizes the things that the rappers talk about in their songs. She listens to the words behind the beat, which is something I don't do often, and finds the meaning of those words. Her analyses seem effective in describing the hip hop culture.

French Hip Hop Culture

Being in America, where the hip hop culture originated, I never thought about other countries having their own version of hip hop culture. Watching the different rap videos from artists from a variety of cultures introduced me to a broader aspect of the widespread culture. There are Indian rappers, French rappers, English rappers, Spanish rappers, and even Israeli rappers. Each culture has its own set of topics that they choose to rap about. The rappers here in America predominantly rap about having money and material things. Other popular topics for them to rap about are sex, drugs, and cars.

In French culture, it is popular to rap about the hardship of the rapper's lives. The rappers in french culture are mostly people that are immigrants. A lot of the rappers are of African descent. Being that most of the rappers immigrated to France they experience a lot of problems with getting jobs and making a good living. They frequently live in poverty and live in the poor area of Paris. The group Bouchees Doubles is an example of a French hp hop group. This group consists of a black man and a guy who looks like he is hispanic. They have a single which is entitled Lis nos coeurs, which translates to read our hearts. Their group name, Bouchees Doubles, translates to Bite Doubles. Neither the name of the song or the name of the group seems to have a negative or violent connotation. This implies that their culture, or at least this one group in particular, raps about the hardships that they have personally faced. Judging by the title of the song, read our hearts, it seems that the song is about how they have been hurt in their lives. It implies that they have a sadness that they want to share with the world and is trying to relate to those who have had led similar lives to them.

Peer Review

The peer review session worked fairly well for me this class. Last semester I found it to be ineffective and somewhat of a waste of time. However, this time I used the things that I learned from peer review last semester to help me revise my group's papers better. I used my knowledge of what works and what doesn't work in a paper to help me give good feedback on the papers I revised. I also found the feedback that I gave, helpful to use in my own paper. Switching positions from the writer to the audience gave me an idea of the things I should add to my paper in order to make it better.

However, I did feel that the time given to us to make corrections and also discuss them was insufficient. I felt myself rushing to get through the first paper I read in order to read the next one and give feedback on it also. I believe that I gave good feedback on the first paper I read but I didn't have much time to make many comments on the second paper. I feel that the paper that we filled out to help guide us in the revision process took up too much time and is not as vital as actually discussing the paper verbally. There were too many questions to answer on the paper and I spent my time trying to answer every single one of them and I ran out of time to discuss the papers as much as I had wanted to. In the future I would rather just make commments on the actual draft and maybe use a few of those questions on the worksheet as a guide to more specific feedback. But I feel that rushing to try to get all those questions answered is less effective. Overall, the peer review was helpful to me and I should see a difference in the quality of my paper now.

"College"

The movie PCU is about a high school senior, interested in attending Port Chester University, who takes a trip to the school to view the campus and the college life. After taking a long bus ride to the university, he finds the person that someone suggested he see about being given a tour of the university. When he meets the guy and asks him for a tour, the guy declines to show him around. Not willing to take no for an answer, the "pre-fresh" incessantly demands that the guy give him a tour.

Still not willing to give a tour, the college student gives him a quick overview of "college". He says to him that "Beer will be your best friend, drink lots of it. You're a freshman, so girls will pretty much be out of the question. Don't sign up for any classes before eleven o'clock."

This advice would fall into the category of a red herring fallacy. His advice suggests that all college is about is getting drunk, having sex, and partying so much that early classes should be averted. The pre-fresh is misled into thinking that this is what college will be like and isn't shown that there is actually another side of college where you actually have to go to class and learn.

Chris McCandless' "misrepresentation" of a college student.

Chris McCandless was a very outgoing and adventurous young adult. He didn't too much depend on the help of his parents, or anyone else for that matter. He displayed his independence through his thrill-seeking, extemporaneous adventures through the wilderness. McCandless seemed to enjoy taking risks, being self-reliant, and surviving on as few supplies as possible.

McCandless would frequently take off to pursue random expeditions without first notifying anyone of his whereabouts. He was very ambitious, and considering his personality traits, this did not seem very erratic for him to do so. Chris worked to save his money up and instead of blowing it on frivolous items, as typical college students would, he bought himself a car and some equipment for his wilderness trips. This behavior is very atypical of a college student, in that he actually saved his money to buy something that was actually a necessity for him. A typical college student would just buy things impulsively and end up purchasing unavailing items that will virtually be of no use to them in the future. Most college students are still trying to grasp the concept of spending a little bit of their money and also saving some of it. When young adults, who are destitute of the "real" world experience and the responsibilty that comes along with it, get a hold of money their first instinct is to blow it on something frivolous. Usually it's something such as alcohol, clothes, video games, cd's, movies, or clubs. So by McCandless actually saving up enough money to buy something beneficial, is already an idiosyncrasy as compared to most other college students.

McCandless' social life was also a peculiar one as compared to other college students of the same age. When all his friends began to join different fraternities and other social organizations, Chris pulled away from that. He began to spend more time alone and gradually lost touch with those he was once close to. Most college students try to join various organizations to become more social and to meet more people. But McCandless did the opposite and remained more reserved and introverted, which shocked his friends. Chris' behavior,to those who had once enjoyed being around him, was impalpable. They couldn't understand why he wasn't just more like them and everyone else in college.

Finally, McCandless met someone with whom he had made some kind of connection with. His name was Wayne Westerberg. Westerberg had met Chris while he was in pursuit of one of his many excursions. McCandless and Westerberg automatically hit it off and became good friends. Sometimes McCandless would send Westerberg a postcard letting him know where he was and that he was doing fine. Other times, Westerberg wouldn't hear from him at all. Chris had even gone back to work for Westerberg for a little while until he had earned enough money to buy new supplies for his next endeavor.

McCandless' aloof behavior and surreptitiousness caused his loved ones, and anyone he had come into contact with, to lack an understanding of who he was and why he did the things he did. No one understood why he would just take off, without a word to anyone, and lack the necessary supplies to be able to adequately fulfill his needs. No one understood what he was seeking or trying to accompolish by exploring nature and living in the wilderness. He did not live up to the stereotypical image of what a college student is expected to be. He decided he wanted to be different and therefore his death was not understood by anyone. The ambiguity of McCandless' death, of whether it was his intent or if it was unexpected, is the pivot to this stories controversy.

AIDS: Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome or Attempt to Increase Dwindling Sales?

In an attempt to increase sales, businesses will sometimes collaborate with an organization devoted to helping people with some kind of serious illness. Doing this oftentimes evokes some kind of emotion from its potential customers, while simultaneously advertising their merchandise. This grabs the attention of consumers and gives them an urge to help people in need. The advertisement allows both the business and the charitable organization to profit from the increase of sales and also leaves the consumers with a proud feeling of altruism. However, in rare cases, a company will attempt to use this advertising strategy and will not achieve its desired outcome. In the 1980's, people were slowly learning how serious of a disease and how common AIDS was becoming. The clothing company United Colors of Benetton decided to buy the picture of a family grieving over their dying, AIDS-infected relative. The family consented to selling the photograph to the company and the United Colors of Benetton decided to make this image a part of their advertising. This image, contrary to what the company tried to achieve, did not appeal to consumers.
The first thing I notice when I look at the picture is the man in the bed who appears to be dying. I stare and stare at the man trying to figure out if this man is a real person or if he is some kind of sketched caricature. My next thought is why he is the only one in the picture that is not an actual person. My mind is on everything but the intended target. The overall message of this image evokes a feeling of sadness and sympathy that averts my attention away from the company's logo on the bottom of the picture and onto bigger issues concerning health. My first time ever hearing of this company was when I looked at the photo, and I couldn't even tell what was being advertised. The fact that this photo was an advertisement for a clothing company was the furthest thing from my mind. I thought it would be advertising a hospital, a type of medicine, or a support group, but certainly not clothing. Instead of buying a photo of a real family grieving, they should have perhaps reenacted this scene and put some of their products in the advertisement. In addition to not showing any of its products, the ad also does not say anything about donating any of their profit to help AIDS patients. If the ad had mentioned something about a portion of the proceeds going towards helping victims of AIDS then it would have been more appealing. Since the ad showed no proof of it making this picture part of its advertising for the benefit of those suffering from the disease, it merely just appears as though it's exploiting this family. The family is shown at a time when they are expressing real grief for their relative who is perishing right before their eyes. I don't see how this is supposed to get people to want to shop at the advertised store. It seems that the only ones that monetarily profitted from this advertisement is the family that sold the picture to United Colors of Benetton. In this case, AIDS stands for Attempt to Increase Dwindling Sales moreso than Acquired ImmunoDeficiency Syndrome