To be honest, I am not too sure what this blog is supposed to be about. I am supposed to be writing about what underlying ideologies/beliefs are in the text, what is and is not being valued...I have read it over several times but nothing is clicking. Maybe these questions are hard to answer due to the unethical text I decided to work with. The word "gay" does not really have any underlying ideologies or beliefs. It is used as an insult for a multitude of things from trying to hurt someone's personal life style to complaining about some mundane task. There have been for years homophobic and anti-homosexual people out there lashing out against a group of people that are no different from you or me. I guess you could say that the ideologies and/or beliefs behind this prejudice come from different types of groups of people. For example the (Neo) Nazis, Ku Klux Klan, Westboro Baptist Church all  had and have continued to hate the homosexuals either due to a crazed leader or because it is what the bible told them to do. What is not being valued is that no matter your sexual preference you are still a human being. It is the character of that human being that determines whether or not that person is "bad". I think that is what irritates me the most about this topic is because the ignorant homophobic bible pushing idiots cannot see that their ideals and beliefs are what making this world an awful place, not whether or not if a man wants to lie with another man or woman with woman. They can't take the time to open their eyes like their God wants them to and accept all of His creatures for who they are. Now I am no by any means a man of religion or faith but damn it all do I know more about the message of God than those assholes. Yeah sure the bible is up for anyone's interpretation and I know this is supposed to an objective project but this blog isn't objective. It's a blog. Anything goes in the internet as stated by rule #8 of the internet, "There are no real rules about posting." But I digress. So what was I actually supposed to answer? I'm not too sure but I think I touched base on what I was supposed to write about. "Gay" has turned from meaning happy to describing someones personal sexual preference to being tossed around as another insult as common as the word "the". Why? Probably because being gay is different and in society, especially America's, being different is bad and we shun the different. Also the bible told us to hate the gays. So we should definitely pick on them and hate them with as much passion as we can because that makes sense, right? There is absolutely nothing being valued behind the unethical use of gay. The world is full of hate and prejudice, it's a disgusting place where we have groups of people destroying people's lives who are just trying to be happy and find love where they can. But whenever I get infuriated by the ignorance of anti-homosexuality groups I always look down at my wristband that says, "It gets better...<3" and hope for the best.

Project 2 Preliminary Ideas

It's been a long weekend. Sorry I couldn't come up with a catchy title for this blog post like I normally do. Anyway I think that I am going to use the word "gay" for my unethical text. I know it is not a book or a document that made the whole world gasp but that one word causes a lot more harm then a lot of lengthy texts do today. I originally had the idea of doing the Jim Crow Laws and possibly throw in the three crows from the Disney classic Dumbo in there but after discussing with my roommate we both agreed that writing about the unethical use of the word "gay" in today's society would be way more important to write about. I think if I were to incorporate things like the original meaning of the word, the path of why and how the word became what it is today and included why it became an insult it would add a whole lot more meaning to my paper. Also, those are pretty interesting and easy topics to compile research on. I was also planning on bringing up Prop 8 in my paper because I feel like it is part of the cultural events attached to the unethical use of the word "gay".

Project 1 Analysis

As far as I know my project went fairly well. I did what I had to do. Followed instructions. Completed the assignment and wrote about two things I like to talk about; music and comics. My two biggest struggles that I had were getting started and writing for this genre. I never really had the motivation to get this assignment started. Yes I knew that I had to finish it and turn it all in on time, but I procrastinated until the very last second which may have affected my writing but without any motivation to begin this project I did not feel the need to begin until right before the due date. Also, writing reviews for me is actually a little more...not necessarily challenging since I can complete the task without trouble as long as I know about what I am reviewing but it is not the genre I prefer to write. Like I said in my first blog post I much rather to take a creative approach to my writing than having a ridged structure than I am supposed to follow. I used to work at my high school's radio station and had an on-air show with my brother one year and a solo one the next. On those shows the topics would normally revolve around comics and/or music. Music especially would be easy to talk about since you could play the song or artist you wanted to talk about and discuss the elements of the song of which your listeners just heard. However, with a review, you have no idea if your reader heard that album or song that you are trying to review. It is a crap shoot. Hopefully you write well enough to make the reader want to go out and listen to that album but it is a whole new dynamic when talking passionately about something your audience just heard as opposed to something they may or may not have heard recently. Maybe it is because I have become a better speaker than writer over my years of radio, debate team and theater that I have trouble with writing down my true feelings about something without being able to freely write my thoughts. But I digress, I think next project I should probably start my writing process a little earlier than I did with this one so I can hopefully write a better paper. Also, I think I am going to have either a different person read my paper or have multiple people read my project so I get more than a quick format fix suggestion from my peer review. If I'm supposed to reach a regional level of revision I am going to need to have someone say there are more things wrong than just the format for a paper that I pretentiously believe to be pretty much perfect.

Reviewception

This is a blog entry comparing the review styles of an album review done by the online version of Rolling Stone magazine and a comic book review done by Amazon.com. Essentially my task is to do a review of two reviews comparing how they review and what conventions they use in their reviews. The two sites have very different styles which implements a variable that forces you to look at one review as more reliable than the other. Rolling Stone magazine has been reviewing all types of music since 1967 which, to me, makes them a lot more credible than Joshua Koppel from Chicago throwing in his two cents who has been a member since June. Despite the differences, there are a few similarities between each review. For example, both Rolling Stone and Amazon provide all of the essential information about the item you are reading about such as artist/author, publisher/producer, etc. Each review also provides a star rating for that simple quick check to see if it is even bother reading the review. A brief description about both items is given in each of the reviews, however, due to the more professionalism of Rolling Stone, their description goes into greater detail and provides a lot more background for that album. Rolling Stone is tailored to people who are really interested in the music that they listen to and want to know every last bit of information about. Their articles provide a great description of the style of the album comparing it to previous albums by the same artist as well as albums of similar artists. They use a fairly formal tone in their writing unlike Amazon which is always a case by case scenario for their writing style. All in all, I would definitely rely more on Rolling Stone for an album review, however, if you were just looking for a simple customer review, Amazon would be the place to go before thinking of purchasing a certain item.

Brainwashing. I mean Brainstorming.

I am going to review the newest Black Keys album "El Camino" for part of this project. I am most likely going to review this album in the form of a Rolling Stones article. I want to review "El Camino" because the Black Keys are one of my top three favorite bands (the other two being the White Stripes and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs). Also, I would like to tell my peers of the great sound that this band can produce. They have grown so much musically and listening to them is quite an experience. My second review will be on a graphic novel. I'm not sure which one yet. It's either going to be Watchmen, Kingdom Come or Superman: Red Son. Each of those comics were brilliant works of art and story telling. I have been a big fan of comics for several years and a self-proclaimed nerd my entire life. I plan on writing this review in the style of a book review. Not sure the exact style yet. I want something greater than an Amazon review but nothing too prestigious. But I know that I would be able to talk about the story, the art, the character development and the symbolism behind each of these graphic novels with great depth. They are some of the greatest comics I have ever read.

A Brief History of Writing: The Devin Prior Story

I learned how to write sometime before kindergarten. It began with the ABC's and grew to words, then sentences and evolved to forming complex sentences. In the first grade I had to write a weekly paragraph of what I did that week or what I had planned on doing. Soon those paragraphs turned into pages and eventually into papers. Throughout elementary school and most of middle school a standard paper was a basic five paragraph format. My writing really developed in seventh and eighth grade when in order to receive an A we had to write two more of whatever was required (i.e. if there was a five paragraph paper due we needed to have seven in order to receive the A otherwise we would get a C for doing the average work). Each semester we were assigned five papers to write, each one on a different topic and a different genre. Writing all of those papers and having them edited by my teacher really showed me what I needed to do in order to improve my writing. Unfortunately in high school I did not give as much attention to my writing as I would have liked to. There were not many assignments that involved writing in the classes that I selected and were placed in and if there was, the assignment was usually a basic research or informational paper that required zero creativity which I found to be quite boring. I always tried to add in my own style for these informational papers which unfortunately usually caused a deduction in my grade. My favorite style of writing is not having one. Having a free flow of thoughts scratched out onto a piece of paper, writing whatever is on your mind, creating a reality that exists solely in your head and describing the beauty or horribleness of that world through the use of your words making the reader explore your inner thoughts; That, to me, is the best type of writing. A true expression of what the writer is thinking. Because when you pick up a pen and paper and just sit down and begin to write whatever comes to your mind that is the truest form of writing.