Modern Family

For todays free write, I will be talking about my favorite T.V. show Modern Family. I started watching this show when it first came on a couple of years ago and instantly liked it. I love all of the characters and the different families throughout the show and all of their different stories and perspectives.

            My favorite character would have to be Phil. He is the dad of his family, which consists of him Claire, Luke, Alex, and Haley. Phil and Luke together is usually pretty funny because they have the same personality and aren’t the smartest people and do some pretty funny things.

            I also like Jay as well. He is an older man who married a younger woman named Gloria. Together they take care of Gloria’s son from a previous marriage named Manny. Manny acts way to old for his age and is really mature. He is pretty funny too but Jay still is my favorite from their family. His attitude and way of doing things really just makes me like him for some reason.

            My favorite character from the last family would have to be Cam. He and his partner Mitchell have an adopted daughter Lilly. Cam also dresses up as a clown named Fizbo, which is usually pretty funny. Cam is just altogether a funny guy and always does something pretty funny things in each episode.

            Altogether, this show is hilarious. I also like how each of the family’s stories during the show go along together. The writing for this show is always good and I laugh every time I watch it. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to watch the show as much as I would like to here at school. I never can keep up with it and sit down at the right time to watch it. So, when I go home I usually catch up on them because I record them on my DVR.

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The Cubbies

So for todays free write, I will be talking about my favorite sports team. The Chicago Cubs are and always will be my favorite sports team. Yes, I like the Chicago Bulls and the Chicago Bears, but baseball is my favorite sport and the Cubs are the team that I follow the most and I really like going to their games.

            Despite the Cubs infamous World Series drought, I will always be there to support the Cubbies. It’s been a rough time hearing about how they haven’t won in so long but I don’t care. Wrigley Field is one of my favorite places to be and I love their hot dogs. I don't care that it’s not as big or fancy as other new ballparks. I just like the environment and the people are always nice too, theres nothing like going to a Cubs game on a nice sunny day.

            Even though the Cubs are obviously in a rebuilding year (it will probably be a couple of years) I have been excited to watch their games again as their season finally began this month. I love baseball and played my whole life until this year. This will be an interesting summer without baseball. It will be my first summer without baseball since I was about five years old. Watching the pros really makes me want to play again.

            Although the Cubs have been torturing their fans by not being the best as far as records go, I will still watch as many games as possible. It also doesn’t help that the Cardinals are in our division, no matter what it seems like they also have a solid line-up. I am however looking forward to seeing what Theo Epstein, Dale Sveum, and Jed Hoyer can do with the Cubs. Hopefully they can build a solid foundation for the future and we can finally win another a World Series, and you know when they do, it will be pretty crazy.

            I also recently saw this commercial for “The Show” which is a baseball video game for PS3. Its kinda cool but a little disappointing that it’s a video game and night real life… 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVGAfA15U1I

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Research Papers...

So, usually when it comes time to write a research paper, I like to procrastinate...I'm not gonna lie, even though I don't mind writing essays I just hate doing the actual research part. I don't like to take the time to sit there and read or look up information to support my arguments for my paper. I know that procrastination is not a good technique or habit to use but it does help me sometimes because by procrastinating, it makes me work harder to meet my deadline. 

         When it comes time to actually writing my research paper, I usually like to do my research first. I usually just start with some general sources that go over my topic and cover the basics of what it includes. Then I look for more detailed sources with some very specific facts that I need to prove whatever I am arguing or talking about. I also write down specific ideas or quotes I get from the research on post it notes. This way I won’t forget where I got the information and can easily look back on it instead of going through the text again.

         Once I feel that I have enough support and research, I start to organize everything. Before I start actually writing, I like to look at all the support that I have and piece together an outline of my paper.

         Then, I usually like to write the whole paper in one sitting. This way I use the same style throughout the paper. I like to write a rough draft without any citations, just the ideas. I do this because I don’t want to deal with the process of citing things when first writing the paper; I just want to write it. Then I usually take a break. Once I can motivate myself again, I go back through the paper and read/edit it. Then, I go through it and add in the citations that I need.

         Then, when everything is cited and it’s in what I think is the “final draft”, I read through it around five times and then have someone else (usually my Dad) read and proof read it.

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Close Readings

This week we learned about close readings. I personally am not a huge close reader or reader of any kind. I do like to read certain books and stories by particular authors, but for the most part, I am not a huge reader. However, this weeks lesson taught me how to look closely at the text we are reading and try and analyze what is truly going on instead of just looking over the text briefly and hoping that I understood what it was saying.

            I think that it is important for us to learn the technique of close reading because it will help us understand and be able to analyze any texts that we read. By annotating texts it will help us be able to go back and learn/remember what we read about and help us in case we have to go back through the texts for answering questions.

            Normally when I read a text or a story, I just kind of go through the motions and read over what the words say but do not actually pay attention to any themes or messages the story is trying to portray. After our lesson about close reading and reading the story “Hills Like White Elephants” in class, I was able to realize that a short story like this for example has much more to talk about in the brief story then what meets the eye. Although it is a short story, when I first read it I just noticed that there was a guy and a girl talking and drinking. I really did not pay attention to the actual text or what was going on. But later we discussed in class what the real message was, abortion. I would have never guessed that from my initial reading of the text. After we did a close read of it, I was able to understand the true meaning of the story.

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Project 3 idea

So for this week’s blog I will be talking about what I want to do with our third project. The text I have been working with is the movie Jurassic Park. It is one of my favorites of all time and I can watch it over and over again.

            For the actual research essay, I have decided that I want to talk about the negative effects of genetic alterations and talk about how science trying to control nature is a bad idea. This connects with Jurassic Park because for those of you have haven’t seen the movie, basically scientists bring back dinosaurs from extinction through DNA samples from inside of mosquitos trapped and fossilized in amber. They try to control the dinosaurs from breeding by making them all females. They also think that by not giving them the amino acid lysine, if they ever break free they would die because it is an essential amino acid and without it, they would die.

            However, as said by one of the characters opposing the scientists ideas in the movie, life always finds and way and adapts to survive. Obviously, bringing back dinosaurs or any creature from a completely different era is a terrible idea in my opinion. I believe this because we don’t know exactly what they will be like or how they will behave since it’s likely no one has ever seen one before. And also because they went extinct for a reason, nature decided that they were not suitable for survival anymore.

            I think that humans should not mess with or alter nature’s ways. I think that ultimately, it will lead to bad things and could screw nature up. I think that we should take a more natural approach and avoid genetic alterations in animals and crops. I also think that genetic alterations should be banned for use on humans.

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Jurassic Park Review

The movie Jurassic Park is about an island theme park with dinosaurs as the main attraction. Mr. John Hammond, the owner, invites a group consisting of paleontologist Dr. Grant, paleobotanist Dr. Sattler, mathematician and chaos theorist Dr. Malcolm, Hammond’s lawyer Mr. Genarro, and Hammond’s grandchildren Tim, and Lex to inspect it before it opens to the public. While the group is on a park tour, a greedy park employee shuts down the park's power along with the security system to allow him access to the dinosaur embryos and sell them to a competing company. Despite his failed attempt, the employee jeopardizes everyone else’s safety as the dinosaurs break free and begin going on a rampage as the cat and mouse game begins while the humans attempt to restore the power and escape to safety.

The general underlying theme of the film is that life will always find a way. Despite genetic alterations such as gender control and amino acid restrictions used by the scientists creating the dinosaurs, they will find a way to breed and thrive in their environment. Humans cannot and should not control nature, as it will always find a way to survive.

Steven Spielberg always does a good job directing his films. There are many suspenseful scenes and times where you have no idea what is going to happen next. When I was watching this with a group of my friends for the ethnography, they were on the edge of their seat as they were waiting to find out what would happen. The screenplay was also co-written by the author Michael Crichton, who wrote the book this film was based off of. I read the book “Jurassic Park” which was much more violent than its adaptation. Steven Spielberg wanted certain parts of the book taken out because of the violence. Many other changes were made from the book such as switching the ages and personalities of the characters Tim and Lex to better suit the actors. Spielberg wanted a certain actor to play Tim so they switched him with Lex. As usual, other details or parts of the book were taken out because they simply could not fit all of it into the movie. But overall, I feel that they did a good job of translating the text.

The quality of the special effects in this movie is outstanding as it won several academy awards for them. When I was watching it with some friends for my ethnography, they could not believe how real the dinosaurs looked especially with the technology for 1993 when the film was released. This film is even the 17th highest grossing film in USA box office history. The only flaw I could really think of for this movie is that the idea of taking DNA from a mosquito trapped in amber millions of years ago and then creating a fully functioning dinosaur is pretty far fetched. I just do not think that even with today’s technology that would be possible.

            This movie has been one of my favorites since I was about five years old when I first saw it. To this day I can watch it over and over again. As a little kid, I was always fascinated with dinosaurs and when I first saw this movie I could not believe I was actually seeing what I thought were real live dinosaurs. I highly recommend this movie for anyone of any age and give it a rating of five out of five stars. 

Movie Review at Imdb.com: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107290/reviews

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Spring Break

Over spring break, I don’t have too many plans. I’m just head home and probably just hang out with my family. I also have a research project and research paper that I’m going to try to convince myself to do, who knows if that will actually happen. I’m looking forward to having this week off. It will be nice to just hang out and be lazy for a week. Even though we aren’t going anywhere warm and sunny like Florida or California, I think I will still find a way to enjoy this break.

            My only real plans are to go back to see my high schools rugby team play and I’ll probably go to their practices and help my old coach out and stuff. I think that would be a lot of fun to do. I’ll be able to go watch a couple of their games and catch up with some old friends from the team who haven’t graduated yet. It will also just be nice to go home and stuff. I haven’t been home since winter break.

            I’ll probably end up playing guitar a lot. I play my guitar a lot here but I don’t have an amp to play with so it will be nice to go home and use mine. I also have some more guitars at home, which I haven’t gotten to play in a while. I also need to get some new strings and clean the guitar I have here. It’s getting pretty dirty and the strings are starting to get old.

            All in all, I think that my spring break will be pretty laid back. I’ll just do some things here or there. Hopefully that includes my projects. I’ll catch up on some sleep, play guitar, and go watch some rugby and hang with some friends. Nothing too exciting but something I’m looking forward to.

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The Movie Fan

After stepping foot in the Movie Fan, I could not believe how many movies there were to pick from. I feel like the collection there was much more vast than the ones I have seen at the Blockbuster by my house. Blockbuster is really the only other movie rental place I have been to so I’m just going to compare Movie Fan to that. I also liked that Movie Fan had VHS and DVD’s to choose from. I thought it was also cool that they had the actual DVD covers/cases instead of the generic case with the name of the place you are renting from. At first I wasn’t sure if they would have recent releases because it seems like it’s a smaller run business and I don’t really know how all of that stuff works but I feel like they would be at a disadvantage when it comes to getting brand new releases.

I also liked Movie Fan better than Blockbuster because it seemed more like a placed owned by movie fans (makes sense) and they actually care about their jobs. The place just had a cool vibe and had an overwhelming selection of movies. I feel like I went back in time because of seeing all of the VHS movies. Even though it wasn’t that long ago that VHS’s were the main way to watch movies, it just reminded me of being a kid again. They also had a ton of candy and snacks to choose from. The place also smelled like pizza and I was very hungry.  I think the guy at the counter was having pizza for lunch. Pretty much the whole time we were in there I was thinking about eating some pizza. The pizza at Tri is not good and I haven’t had good pizza in a long long time.

Movie Fan is a cool place and I am glad that I went there and gave it a look. I think it’s a much better place to rent from Blockbuster and could just spend hours looking at the different DVD/VHS covers.

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Favorite Rugby Player

So for todays free write, I will be talking about my favorite rugby player. I have a couple of favorite players unfortunately; none of them play for the U.S. I have also spent a lot of time watching different teams/countries play. Unfortunately, rugby is kind of hard to watch here in the states because of its low popularity. I have to turn to YouTube and other online sites for watching rugby. This year, the rugby world cup took place in New Zealand. Luckily, I was able to watch it from some random website. Over the years, my favorite player has to be Francois Hougaard, who plays for the South African National team and the Blue bulls.

            Francois Hougaard plays both wing and scrumhalf. These positions are the same ones that I play here at ISU. I like his style of play as well. He is very quick and sneaky. He is also a good runner and can juke out many players. He also likes to do a crazy dive every time he scores. He very fun to watch and brings lots of excitement to the game. Unfortunately he only started one game for South Africa in the world cup this year, but he did come in as a sub for four games. He also scored three tries in the tournament. Below is a link from a YouTube video of some of his highlights enjoy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6I51jBTua5w.

Rugby is defiantly my favorite sport (Besides Baseball) and is always exciting to watch. It’s also very fun to play and I look forward to continue watching and playing in the future. I have only played rugby for five years now and I am still learning new things about the sport everyday. I know it’s not very popular in America but I feel that in the next upcoming years it will gain some popularity.

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Texts and Pictures

Today’s topic is kind of hard for me to write about. I’m not 100% sure if what I’m about to write is right but…I’ll try my best. So, I do like to read but usually the books I read are books with only one picture, the front cover. So I’m going to avoid the books as a text right now and talk about something I was shown recently and have grown quite fond of.

Memes. These little pictures with funny sayings on them have become pretty entertaining for me lately. My friend Mike showed me these about a week or so ago and I now go to quickmemes all the time to check them out. There are many different types or categories of memes, but my favorite ones would have to be  Philosoraptor, Conspiracy Keanu, College Freshman, Scumbag Steve, and Good Guy Greg. But my favorite category of meme is Futurama Fry. I’ve also noticed that ISU has a university meme page as well.

Like I said, memes have both a picture with text as well. The picture is the same for each meme of the same category but the words change and are usually pretty funny. At the end of my blog post, I have a link to my favorite meme category Futurama Fry. So many of his memes are funny and I can relate to some of them, which makes them even funnier.

I’m glad Mike showed me memes, although they have been a distraction for when it comes time for school stuff but it’s worth it. They are super funny and I haven’t seen anything like them before. They have some pretty good points/ideas and are relatable for everyone. Like I said, I don’t really know a lot about them but I like to just go to quickmemes and just click on new ones everyday and get a good laugh.

http://www.quickmeme.com/Futurama-Fry/popular/1/

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Some Of My Favorites

So for today’s blog entry, I will be talking about some of my favorite things. First I will start out will my favorite Movies and actors. My number one all time favorite actor is Adam Sandler. I have liked him since I was really little when my brother showed me his movies and when he was on SNL. My favorite movies of his are Big Daddy, Happy Gilmore, Waterboy, Bill Madison, The Wedding Singer, Little Nicky, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, and Zohan. Some of his more recent movies have been not so good, but I still like them. Another one of my favorite actors is Will Ferrell. He’s so funny and I really liked him on SNL and in movies. My favorites were Ricky Bobby, Anchorman, Step Brothers, Old School, Semi-Pro, and The Other Guys.  My third favorite actor is Ben Stiller. I loved Dodgeball, all of the Meet the parents movies, and Tropic Thunder, and many others.

            Next I’ll talk about my favorite bands. I have liked Blink-182 ever since around sixth grade and love all of their albums. I was pretty pissed when they broke up but I’m glad they are back. Another one of my favorite bands is The Red Hot Chili Peppers. I have liked them since around 1999 when Californication came out. Another thing my brother showed me that I love. I love all of their songs and albums from Blood Sugar Sex Magik and on. I am actually going to see them in May. I also love other bands like Pink Floyd, Brand New, Modest Mouse, Best Coast, Tokyo Police Club, and many others.

            Last I’ll talk about my favorite sports teams. The Cubs are and always will be my favorite sports team of all time. I will remain loyal to them forever even if they never win a world series. I also like the Bulls as well. They are an exciting team to watch and they actually win which is a nice change when watching them instead of the Cubs…but like I said, I will always love the Cubs. (348).

TV Commercial's

So after watching some SportsCenter on EPSN the other day, I noticed that they had a lot of repeating commercial’s that they played pretty much every or every other commercial break. Some of these commercials involved many male-related products. I can only assume that they ads are targeting men due to the fact that I believe men mostly view ESPN.         

            Some of the products included Axe body spray, various up-coming sporting events such as the Super Bowl and the Masters, Several different Hampton Hotel commercials showing men on business trips and convincing you why they are the best hotel chain, a weight loss product, and National Car Rental services.

            Hampton and National go together perfectly because they are both big businesses when it comes to guys being on the road for business trips. You will always need somewhere to stay and most likely something to drive when your away from home. They also had the typical Axe body spray commercial where the guy sprays himself and every girl suddenly wants to get with him. The Super Bowl and Masters commercials were no surprise since ESPN is a sports T.V. station.

            The Commercials that probably stood out the most for me were the Hampton commercials. The first one showed a guy iron a waffle on an ironing board. They were advertising their free continental breakfast offer that they have for their guests. The second one had someone in one of those suits that Doc Brown was wearing in Part I of Back to the Future in the beginning when he gets shot. The person then gets under the sheets in a bed because the sheets are so gross. This time they were advertising the fact that they clean their sheets everyday.

            These commercials stuck out for me mostly because they were creative and the one where guys’ ironing a waffle is probably something that has been done before by lazy guys on the road for work.

Introduction

Hello everyone, my name is Eddie. I am a freshman here at ISU and this is the first time I have ever had, or used a blog. To be honest, I am not really a big fan of blogs but I have never really given them a chance either. However, I am open to giving blogs a chance and will keep up with the required posts.

I really like to read and started reading for fun my senior year in high school. My favorite author is Michael Crichton, I have read five or six of his books so far and have enjoyed everyone one of them. My favorite book by his is either the Lost World or Prey. Both of these books were suspenseful and kept me guessing about what was going to happen next. I also just got finished reading the Harry Potter series. At first, I thought that the Harry Potter books were overrated and that everyone was crazy for liking them so much but after giving the first book a chance, I quickly started enjoying them.

As far as my writing, in the past I have gotten pretty good grades when it came to writing essays and papers. I feel pretty confident in my writing skills and am not scared when it comes time to writing papers. Research papers will scare me sometimes because if I get a weird topic it is hard to find good supporting research. But besides the research part, I find that writing comes pretty natural to me.

I think that English 101 will be a class that will be different from any other English classes I have taken. I have never been required to keep a blog for any English class before and am wondering how it will turn out. All in all, I look forward to this class and hope to improve my overall English skills. (315)