Shocking, Spooky, Scary, ...Squash?

I feel like a bad stand-up comedian. 

"Ya know, what's the big deal with pumpkins?" *crickets*

But seriously. What the crap, America. We're carving up perfectly edible food so we can put fire in it for one night before it gets stolen and chucked at our mailbox. Did you know there are starving children in Africa? Eat your goddamn pumpkins. They're even delicious, if the word pie comes after. How did something this stupid even start?

The British, of course. 

Of course the British were even lamer. Instead of our huge, bad-ass pumpkins, they decided it would be fun to carve up turnips, mangelwurzel, or beets. I don't know why vegetables were thought to be the ultimate thing to carve lanterns from, but you can't expect the British to be logical.

When all the cool British people decided to get away and found 'MURICA, they also decided to ditch the lame vegetables. They found these huge orange things and immediately recognized the superiority of America over everywhere else. This inspiration is known by historians to be the sole cause of victory in the Revolutionary war. Not really.  

These big orange things were biggest during the harvest season, so we started carving them up as a celebration of getting enough food during the summer that only most of us would die during the winter.

Eventually, we started linking these pumpkins with folklore, specifically with the will o' the wisp. We also started linking the carving with All Hallow's Eve, the night before All Saint's Day.

That leads us to where we are now. Americans buy vegetables that they won't eat (they probably buy more of these than vegetables they DO eat) and then murder them, scoop our their innards, and then carve them up like a serial killer would their victims. We then put fire in them, because this is 'MURICA and in 'MURICA fire makes everything better (see July 4th).

And after all that, they still aren't scary. They're still just a lame art project like those macaroni sculptures that you made in preschool. Except with more 'MURICAN wastefulness.

Ruining Halloween with Rhetoric.

This video has a lot of rhetoric in many different forms.

The narration at the beginning has a very sinister quality to it. This is a result of the speaker's inflection and his word choice. But the main reason the narration is creepy is the creepy music in the background.
All of these aspects combine with the somewhat scary visuals to keep us frightened from the start. This narration has the effect of setting the tone and making anyone watching more likely to be scared later. The narration is very successful in accomplishing this purpose

Then the song starts. It's an awesome song, especially in comparison to the one you posted, Mrs. Cardona.

Again, the creepy effect is caused mainly by the music in the background. The minor key and almost industrial-sounding instrumentation create an unsettling mood. The lyrics are all about the town of Halloween, and all of the scary stuff that goes on there. To top it all off, these lyrics are sung by all kinds of frightening creatures, from ghosts to witches. This is to try to scare the audience, but not too much. It is still meant to be somewhat fun, which is why there is catchy singing music not creepy minimalist instrumental music (such as the theme from the movie "Halloween"). The video is very good in accomplishing this purpose because while it was a little scary in a fun way, the part that stuck with me was the catchiness of the song.

Overall this is a fun scary video, not a scary scary video, which is exactly what it is supposed to be.

Why I don't like this class

You should have been expecting a post like this, Mrs. Cardona...

The first thing I should do is clarify what I mean when I say that I don't like this class. I don't mean to say I do not like the people in the class. In fact, I quite enjoy the company of the people in our small class (since the candy binge holiday [a.k.a. halloween] is right around the corner I could call our class "fun-sized"). I don't mean to say I don't like you, Mrs. Cardona, because I do. The only thing you could do better would be to give me tons of extra credit points for no reason. Hint hint...

The reason I dislike this class is the content. I come to class every day waiting to see what thing we are going to do, hoping that it's going to be something interesting, but usually being disappointed. What is so bad about the content, you ask? Here's the truth: America is the greatest country on Earth.

Just kidding. I'm not a politician. If I was I might enjoy this class.

The problem with the content is that it's all doing with no learning. In physics, you learn a formula, and then you figure out how to apply the formula to a certain situation in order to arrive at a single correct answer. In AP Comp, you read or listen to something and then write or talk about it. But you don't really learn anything new. I could have told you when I was in elementary school that when someone says things the people who listen to him like, the people who listen to him will like the person more. The only difference in the analysis that is done in this class and analysis that is done by everybody without thinking is the amount of work and how long it takes.

When I do the work in this class, I don't feel like I'm doing anything. I feel that I'm BSing my way through everything. I used to feel bad about this, thinking there was some trick that I wasn't getting, but now I realize that there is no trick. I'm going through the process correctly, or as close to correctly is possible in this class, it's just that the process is simply busywork.

And what is the purpose of this time-consuming episode of BSing rhetorical analysis? Now we've figured out that an essay uses parallelism twice in the same paragraph. What does it mean? Absolutely nothing. Believe it or not, language is a natural process, and when someone says something a certain way, maybe, just maybe, that's just the way the idea came out of their head. Big deal.

Even if the author does put the effort in to write with a bunch of special rhetorical tricks for some special purpose, and we take the time to keep track of every one of these special tricks, and speculate what they are for, so what? I don't care that this random guy used inverse diction on a sentence in the middle of the 17th paragraph, and there's no reason I should. The author doesn't write so we can analyze the writing. The author has some other purpose in mind. When someone walks into a room and tells you something, you don't ask them how fast they walked to the room. The vehicle between the author's idea and the author's product is not relevant, only the product is. By getting caught up in analyzing the writing, the effect the author's idea has on you is diminished. For example, humor is truly lost once you try to explain why it's funny. I honestly no longer find that video I posted last week funny after having to analyze the humor.

So why am I in this class? I was bad at writing. Not bad bad, but bad in comparison to, say, math. I thought that through this AP class I could finally find the secret to writing. But there is no secret to writing. There is no right answer, and therefore no perfection towards which to work. And that's stupid.

Ruining humor by analyzing it

Apparently, simply laughing at humor isn't good enough. It needs to be analyzed until it is no longer funny, even if one doesn't have the desire or need to reproduce that kind of humor, in which case analyzing it might be slightly useful. But whatever. 

The dominant reason this and all other onion pieces are funny is the deadpan way in which the speech is delivered. Despite it being very funny, the actors act completely serious when speaking. 

Related to this, the setting in which the deadpan is delivered also adds to the humor. In all ways except for what is being said it is identical to a legitimate news show. The graphics, the music, and the way in which the speakers discuss the topic makes the differences even funnier.

The topic also is humorous because it is satire on a common topic: the expectations of our education system. Because most people watching the video know about how that issue is raised, the way the speakers approach the issue (in the same way the actual issue is discussed) becomes more humorous.

Finally, the addition of profanity adds a lot to the video, because it is so out of place, or would be on the type of show that they are imitating. When we hear people talk in the style that they talk, it is usually in a very professional context, a context in which profanity would not be.

Observations from a McDonalds table

The people might not be as interesting as at Ridgedale, but this was close and easy.

Person 1: An older woman, but not elderly, at McDonalds with a younger adult woman and several children. I assume that it is a grandmother/mother/grandchild outing.

Adjectives:
Doting–she offers to buy all of her grandchildren ice cream, without them begging for it first. It was quite a grandmotherly thing to do, slightly spoiling the grandkids.

Impatient–despite caring for her grandkids which is evident through her doting and this outing, she seems a little bit annoyed with the kids. The kids were just doing kid-like things, and she seemed a little unwilling to humor them.

This woman is unhappy with her increasingly boring life. She likes her children and grandchildren, but her life outside of them involves watching soap operas and fox news on TV. She has a college degree, but she has never entered a career where she uses her degree. Her favorite food is some sort of pastry. She drives a Chrysler PT Cruiser.


Person 2: A young man with his pregnant wife and two small children

Adjectives:

Professional–Is wearing a nice overcoat, nice shoes, and has a leather bag

Removed–Despite being there with his kids and wife, he looks at his phone the whole time, even while talking to them.

This man and his wife got pregnant unexpectedly, when they were young, but decided to keep the baby and start a family. He found a job that has potential to be a career, but is still stuck at a low level. He is getting increasingly unhappy with his marriage. He wishes he could hang out with his friends more. He hates politics and doesn't vote. He does not have a college degree, and wishes he had gotten one.


Person 3: An elderly man with his wife

Adjectives:

Old-fashioned–When he walked by the Red-box movie rental machine he looked at the people using it disapprovingly

Loving–even though he and his wife are getting old, he still goes places with her, even boring places like McDonalds

This man has led a happy, involved life, but as his physical and mental abilities are decreasing, he wishes he had kids. He loves his wife, but feels lonely. He has few friends anymore now that he is retired. He is a staunch Mitt Romney supporter and listens to Rush Limbaugh. He does not own an hdtv. The extent of his computer use is to play solitaire. He is a frequent writer of letters to the editor of newspapers.