We pulled up to the back of this brick building I never noticed was in my small town until now.  I knew it was there but it had no effect on me.  My Dad grabbed the keys out of his pocket and fumble for the right one that read do not duplicate.  The glass door creaked open.  I peered inside hesitant to go in.  My Dad looked at me assuring it was all right.  It was dusty.  I saw this long hallway with a door opposite of us a football field away.  Haunted, that's what I thought.  I held my Dad's hand as we made our way to the front by nothing but the moonlight that caught the dust in the air.  Their was chairs upon chairs balanced to the side of the walls, popcorn littered the floor.  The smell was musty, this place felt abandoned.  I remember this clear as day, my Dad flicked on the lights to that Movie theater and everything wasn't so scary.  The chairs were now a jungle gym the popcorn sprinkled on the ground was confetti.  The smell was gone.  I smile and my Dad Spread his arms wide and said "This is ours Toni too!"  I ran and said let's play hide and seek!  It was early fall 2001 and this place was where I'd spend my days fooling around for the next years.  My childhood loved that old runned down theater.

Okay first I want to say I really don't like how this was written.  I really wanted to change it but I didn't.  I would have written a lot better and described the hallway more so I could explain better how I felt.  I think it makes scene what I added about the chairs and popcorn but I would have described it a lot better.  I did lie though when my Dad said that he didn't turn on the lights.  That's how I felt though, I wasn't scared anymore.  I was excited that we owned it.  I was scared of that hallway until my Dad said that, I'm not really sure why.  I guess because him saying that assured me that it would be okay.  I added that because I could remember exactly what he said so well and because that's a part of the story.  I think it helped the tone because that's when I decided the theater wasn't so scary after all.  I don't like how I ended it either.  If I had more time it would have been a lot different.  I also would have changed the part when I said the door creaked open, that's too cliche.  If I could rewrite it it would have the same meaning but different wording.  I would have said a little bit more about why it influenced my childhood.  I could have added details about hiding under the projectors or having older friends that were the employees.  My story would have been a better story if I rewrote it.

Early Memory

Being the only girl among 3 brothers I grew up doing boy things, bad boy things.  We'd wrestle and climb trees, occasionally we'd have mud fights and paint the walls inside with our muddy paws. Our favorite thing to do was to cause mischief.  The laundry hatch from our eyes had so much potential.  Whenever my parents went to wash our clothes they'd be mixed in with spoons, lost mail, our toys, anything we could shove down the shoot.  I was the second oldest so I was like co-captain.  My older brother Joel however always came up with the brilliant plans.  It was my job to follow in his foot steps, cover our tracks, and not to let us get caught.  Now Joel and I being deprived of some mischief lately went to our usual place of trouble, the laundry shoot.  First it was a roll of tape, then the tape container, then a note pad, a lamp, a teddy bear.  Finally we shoved a huge body pillow through.  I remember listening to the individual sounds each item would make against the wood of the shoot.  That  was the best part.  The spoons knocked, the paper lightly scraped the sides, big things would always make the kind of sound you make when you suck in but it would be deeper and more muffled.  The pillow was pretty exciting since it took us a few minutes to inch it into the hatch.  We could tilt our heads into the opening to listen carefully to it's sound.  We heard the muffled woop but something was missing the end sound.  Where was the p of the woooooop.  We ran down to the second floor hatch in the hallway, opened the door and saw the pillow.  We tried to pull it back but it wouldn't come through because the way the hatch was.  In order to pull it through, it would bend in half making the pillow twice as thick.  Joel looked at me and I knew what instantly what he thought.  We can't get caught.  No problem we just needed something that was heavy to push the pillow to the basement.  Shawn!  My younger brother, who just turned 3.  We grabbed his hand and helped him into the shoot. It'd be fun, like a roller coast Joel said.  Shawn smiled.  He slowly lowered him.  I had his left hand and Joel his right.  Counting to 3, we let him go and listened.  He screamed, it was a happy scream though and landed with a thud.  It was quiet.  We ran down to the basement clicked on the lights and saw Shawn's feet in a pile of clothes.  His head popped out as he laughed.  He made it safe, and so did our body pillow.

My Visual Rhetoric Project

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PjpFNYl6niytokycYjZN_gR941u6uekawIiDRo32oTQ/edit

www.flickr.com/tonithetiger

MoCP

I recently visited the Museum of Contemporary Photography.  I thought a lot about the exhibit there called Peripheral Views of America.  I can appreciate any kinda of art and I can honestly say I enjoyed going to the MoCP.  I thought the concept of the exhibit was a little strange though.  After hearing all that Sontag had to say about photography I feel a bit brain washed.  It's hard to not look at it negatively now.  I don't really like how they attempted to capture the United States in just a few hundred photos.  Yeah, that's a lot but can you really explain and visualize something in just photos?  On top of that, all the ones that were taken off of Google Earth were from poor communities.  If I didn't live here and saw this exhibit I would look at America as a sad poor dirty place.  Since I live here does that give me the right to judge wherever that photo was taken from and say that it is a sad poor dirty place? No, maybe that picture was just taken from a bad neighborhood and from the opposite angle that town could look completely different.  I just don't see what they are trying to get at from the Google Earth photos.  On the other hand, I do see their point with the giant collection of photos.  I can see that they are trying to point out that America is a materialistic country.  I don't think that every person in the United States worships objects but our culture influences us to be that way.  I think the videos, The Silent Echo Chamber, really worked.  I thought it was hilarious, yet true and serious at the same time.  It was so foreign to see the people who I know from just the world of television in their own little worlds.  It makes you realize that their stardom is somewhat of a show.  They are real people too, and of coarse I know this, but being a viewer you never see that side of them.

Sontag's messed up views

After reading Sontag's In Plato's Cave I felt bombarded by negativity.  Although I can see the points of her views, they are all extremely exaggerated.  Referring to photos as murder is a bit of an overstatement.  Yes I can see how photos can cause negative emotions to stir within people but not to the point where I think this world should have nothing to do with photography.  In contrast with Sontag's thoughts I do think that photos contain truth.  Honestly if we didn't use any type of photography It would give us a disadvantages when it comes to a lot of thing, education being one of them.  If you use her arguement about how photos don't show everything therefore they aren't truthful, then basically humans can't communicate with eachother anymore.  We all don't explian every little detail of everything that happens in our lives when telling others about events that have happened to us.  There is always going to be that slice of mystery in just about everything in life.  Is it even possible to know 100% of something? Not really, and I don't think that that is a bad thing.  I think life would be boring if we knew everything.  Photos can say a thousand words, and so can people.  Either way those "words" are probably going to be distorted is some way, shape, or form.  Say you actually go the the place where the photo was taken with the exact same environment as when it was taken then does that give you a better impression on what was depicted in the photo.  Of coarse, but then again even experiencing it in real life will still leave you not knowing every detail.  The truth can only be seen to a certain extent.  Overall, photographs are a positive thing not a negative one.  When viewing and taking photos it is important to take in all the angles but you don't have to over think it.

Rhetoric Analysis

Baby Lips is a lip balm made by Maybelline.  I actually own two of theses, the peppermint clear one and the peach one.  I like them a lot that's why I choose to analyze this in terms of rhetoric significance. I usually see ads like this one in seventeen magazine and other magazines that are focused on young women and beauty.  The sender is Maybelline, the message is using baby lips lip balm will give you great lips.  The receiver is women who use beauty products and women in general.  Its a beauty product and their is a women in the ad which made me think it was focused on women.  The exact message is in the name of the product.  This advertisement uses pathos in the name of the product.  Just using the word baby's makes you think of cute babies.  Also when you hear the word babies and their lips you would think of fresh, new, plump, soft, flawless lips.  Using logos if babies have soft lips then you to will get soft renewed lips.  I think the font and colors that Maybelline uses to promote this product was no accident.  They are all bright playful colors.  The font looks playful as well.  At the same time the lady in this ad looks very sophisticated.  With the combination of both of these a sophisticated women can use this and bring out her playful side.  The ad is sending out a message that women who use this will look sexy.

Artist I Admire

Not until recently have I noticed how well Tom Hardy does what he does.  He's an English actor whose first breakthrough performance was in the legendary Christopher Nolan's Inception.  Which is saying a lot because he was co-stars with Leonardo Dicaprio.  If that was his breakthrough roll, living up to Leo's ability, he's going to go far.  And he has, in 2011 I saw Warrior at this theater convention I go to every March in Vegas.  That movie was amazing!  Tom plays a boxer.  In one of the scenes he finally gets to have a deep conversation with his father.  The guy who plays his dad does most of the talking but the camera cuts to Tom a lot.  The way he reacts to what his father says is so realistic and deep.  You can see the truth in his eyes in that scene.  Then Tom was in the new Batman movie where he had to act with his eyes again.  He plays Bane, the bad guy who wears a mask the whole movie.  My old acting coach always said the eyes are the windows to the soul.  Tom really lives up to that.  Just yesterday I saw the movie Lawless, Tom is also in that.  It's a western movie that just proves Tom can have a wide range of character rolls.  I don't use this word a lot but I would have to say that the way Tom Hardy preforms is brilliant.  I have loved every movie he was in that I saw.  I recently read that he likes coffee too and thats a plus in my book!  And if that's not enough, Tom's pretty cute as well.