Alberto's Blog

Assignment #8: The Deaf Violinist

rasputian — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 15:39:00 +0000

First off, the protagonist of this amazing video is the young violinist with a physical crutch of being deaf. The antagonist is the society around her saying that it is impossible for a deaf person to learn to play a violin. The overall theme is that you shouldn’t be discouraged by others, and should overcome your own obstacles to do what you truely wish to do. The external conflict is the conflict between the girl, and those that are putting her down, and making fun of her. Her internal conflict is the conflict between her own deafness, and her desire to play the violin. The climax of the story comes when she finally gets to perform in front of an audience atfer practicing for so long. The setting appears to be in an average neighborhood in Thailand or some other Asian country. Her disability can be taken as a symbol for any type of obstacle that might be in someone’s way of chasing their dreams. The one bit of interesting irony in this story is that a girl who is deaf is able to learn to perform very beautiful music, which she can’t even hear.

Okay, all other things aside, this trailer, and the movie as a whole do contain many literary qualities, including an overarching theme and such.

Assignment #7- The Ridiculously Amazing Lyrebird

rasputian — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:52:51 +0000

At first glance, I just assumed this bird was a simple mimic, maybe being able to mimic one or two other bird songs. After watching the entire video however, I was very surprised that the Lyrebird could imitate sounds like chainsaws and car alarms with almost perfect quality. The sheer amount of vocal cord complexity involved in such mimicry is astounding along with the bird’s memory for how a certain song goes down to the very last note. It certainly was amusing to listen to the lyrebird mimic the sound of chainsaws and woodsaws, since those are sounds made by tools on a solid surface. I believe the whole video about the lyrebird just shows how nature can adapt to society, although there isn’t much of a use for mimicing sounds of civilzation, other than for the entertainment of people.

Assignment #6-Word Part Project

rasputian — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:11:36 +0000

Word Part Project

Assignment #5

rasputian — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 22:43:25 +0000

The media, in my opinion has the greatest effect on self image by promoting the idea of a perfect person. For guys, that is someone who is athletic, handsome, charismatic, and successful with women. For girls, the perfect image is a beautiful, size O, well endowed, attending and faithful wife. One of the most potent effects of this however, is that some kids who feel bad about their self image then resort to belittling others around them, giving them a sort of minor self confidence boost. The formation of “in” and “out” cliches is partially based on this. Some media is decent, like the dove inner beauty promotion ads, but is usually similar to tobacco companies, where on one end they fund and promote no smoking, and on the other end still sell tobacco. http://www.adl.org/what_to_tell/whattotell_media.asp Is where i looked for some of this information.

Assignment #4, Pencil Face

rasputian — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:55:11 +0000

First off, what a bizzare short video. Its obvious as to what sets the mood, scratchy, creepy music, no dialogue, a wierd faced pencil, and a an ominous black hole thing. Anyways, I do believe that there is a moral to this story, which is greed is a negative thing and can destroy you if you don’t keep it in check. The whole mood was pretty creppy, as if you couldn’t get much creepier than a beaming scrunched up face on a pencil as tall as a person. I just don’t understand why the girl even approached something soo outlandish, I definately would have walked away from it if I saw it. If I had the pencil in my possession, i know I immediately draw myself a Ferrari, a huge multi-million dollar house, and a very large stack of money. I mainly chose these items so I would be able to spend my life in leisure and not have to work all the time to get to that point fifty or so years from now when I retire.

Sorting Races

rasputian — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:33:21 +0000

Wow, I only guessed about 6 people right out of the entire group, its pretty amazing how soo many of the people look like a different race than we perceive them to be by looks. I can see how stereotypes are completely wrong overall so easily with this. It was super difficult to determine who was what race, I’m surprised i even guess some of the ones i did.

Summer Reading

rasputian — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 20:52:51 +0000

I decided to read McTeague and A Farewell to arms first to get the reader response journals done. I usually take two days to do one book. The first day I read through the book, and the second day I do the assignment for it.

Randomness

rasputian — Thu, 21 May 2009 02:13:49 +0000

Wow, its weird having a huge list of everyone’s blogs, and not knowing who half of them are, its kinda overwhelming since its hard to keep track of everybody who is blogging. And also, is there any reason why my avatar won’t show up on my main page, is it only for comments on other people’s blogs?

First Thoughts

rasputian — Wed, 20 May 2009 01:32:43 +0000

Man, this is a new experience for me, I’m not really a blogger and am curious to just try it out. I’ll decide whether i like it as a form of expression in my English Class, and whether or not to dread or look forward to blog assignments. So yea, lets see how it goes, and go with it from there.