Winston Churchill is the Man

So for my project I chose to do Winston Churchill's timeless classic speech, "Never Give In." Its considerably shorter than I expected, only being a little over a page and a half. I sure hope that's enough! He does do some pretty cool stuff throughout the speech that I've noticed. What stood out the most was his repetition. He repeats his themes over and over again to prove his point. For example, if you read it and look for words like 'learn,' 'teaches us,' etc, you'll see what I mean.
Yep. There's the man of the week/this blog-post! Peace to you too Winston Churchill! I also was able to learn a lot of the background to the speech. I didn't know that he was speaking to a school, or that they had written a song in his honour (the 'u' is intentional) right before he gave this speech. Historical references are fascinating!

So we'll see how my paper goes. I'm gonna do a big-ol'-chunk-o-writing it tonight. So far I'm probably behind, I've got it pretty well planned but I only have like a sentence of it done. It should be fun!

(http://johnault.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/winston-churchill.jpg)

Matt Costa is the Man

For the life of me I can't think of anything all that English related of late. Obviously, I'm nervous about how my group and I did on the Restaurant Review essay, but other than that there isn't very much to say about Writing 150. Except to brag that our group won the "Get as many points as you can" game. Aw yeah! Go team! This whole weekend was spent drawing and other random stuff. One of which was World of Dance. that was pretty awesome actually! I would definitely recommend it to anyone, its too bad that it's over though.

So today I was able to learn Astair by Matt Costa on guitar. Pretty awesome song, but it turns out that its really hard. Well it will give me something challenging to work on. Speaking of which I would highly recommend Matt Costa, great musician. And Astair, which is great, isn't even my favorite by him!

There's something I can write about! Lyrics in songs! Music is so focused on emotional connection so the lyrics have to be Pathos-driven. I kind of have a fascination with song writing, especially with choosing lyrics. And I have a great respect for those who can become truly extra-ordinary in a time when the simplistic and unoriginal tends to rule the air waves (95.7 - the Party, I'm talking to you) and bring in the money. Lyrics are such a temperamental art, as I've discovered in my own attempts at songwriting. Every word has a different inflection. That is, each word has a different pattern of emphasis or intonation that effect how well they work with a melody. If they don't perfectly fit they sound funny, and almost anyone can pick them out. Therefore, the melody relies on the lyrics, and the lyrics upon the melody. A couple songs that really stick out to me as examples of quality song writing (emphasis on they lyrics and how emotionally powerful they are) are below:

Blue October - Hate Me

Such incredible lyrics. As far as I'm aware its partly about his mother and ex-girlfriend. I love the Bridge especially.

"And with a sad heart I say bye to you and wave
Kicking shadows on the street
For every mistake that I had made
And like a baby boy I never was a man
Until I saw your blue eyes cry
And I held your face in my hand
And then I fell down yelling, "Make it go away!"
Just make a smile come back and shine, just like it used to be
And then she whispered: 'How can you did this to me?'"

So powerful! The break in the music after the final words of the Bridge (admiring sigh). Careful of the swear word in the second verse though.

Nine Inch Nails - Hurt

So I'm aware that this song also has some stronger language. I think Johnny Cash's cover of this song has less swearing, but I don't think it communicates the feeling of the song as well. Listening to this song actually hurts, which makes it so amazing!

"Beneath the stains of time,
The feelings disappear.
You are someone else,
I am still right here."

The Airborne Toxic Event - Sometime around Midnight

Great song. I think pretty much everyone on Earth can connect to the feeling of this song.

"But you know, that she’s watching.
She’s laughing, she’s turning.
She’s holding her tonic like a cross.
The room’s suddenly spinning.
She walks up and asks how you are."

Jay Brannan - Beautifully

My roommate showed me this song this weekend. I think its great! Different look at a typical love song.

"It's not that you're not beautiful, you're just not beautiful to me
She said, how beautiful do I have to be?
When I look in the mirror, you're the only thing I see
And I have loved you beautifully"

Emery
I really really like this band and they have some of the strongest lyrics of most bands I've heard. But its one a lot of people probably won't like as much as I do. The song these lyrics are from is called, "After the Devil Beats his wife" (Sounds a lot worse than it is), But if you wanted to hear some of my favorites by them I'd start with: Studying Politics, In a win, win situation, Ponytail Parade, The Party Song, and so forth.

"I decided long ago
Never let your loved ones know
Who you really are, who you really are
People want the truth but never want the scars"

Yesterday - The Beatles
You didn't think I would actually forget the Beatles, did you? Yesterday is only the single most frequently recorded song of our time! Incredibly well written and composed. The way the melody moves with the words is beautiful. And how it communicates the feelings of Paul McCartney. Its a good thing... I'm struggling not to post the entire song...

"Suddenly,
I'm not half the man I used to be,
There's a shadow hanging over me,
Oh, yesterday came suddenly."

Well that's it. I tried to focus a little more on songs I like specifically for the lyrics because this is a Writing 150 blog but... I may have been stretching it a little bit. Oh well. I had fun writing it.

http://www.torontomusicscene.ca/live-show-reviews/virgin-fest-2007-a-weekend-in-review-saturday.html

Cargo is the Man

Bad news everyone, the Rockies finally lost. After going 10 games straight, they lost to the San Diego Padres last night. But on the bright side, they're the hottest team in Baseball right now. I know that this has nothing to do with Writing, but every team I root for lost this weekend... Except the Rockies. It was nice to go visit my brother up north of SLC, but we also had to watch as BYU lost to Air Force, FSU lost to Oklahoma (Don't worry, I'm rooting for BYU in the game this weekend), and the Denver Broncos lost to Jacksonville! Just as we were going into chronic depression, we remembered that the Rocks just swept the Padres, the Reds, and the Diamondbacks! So I thought I would start this post by bringing up how amazing Cargo (Carlos Gonzales) has been this year. He's leading in 2 of the 3 categories for the NL triple crown and in high contention for this years MVP. Congrats Cargo, you're the man!
Alright back to semi-related stuff. Last Thursday, Michael, Chris, Melissa, and I went to Malawi's Pizza and fed some Malawi orphans. Or at least I did my half of the deal, and now its up to Malawi's Pizza to feed them. My half of the deal was to eat the best meal I've eaten since the Semester began, then they go feed the orphans in Africa. Now 'the best meal I've eaten' is not saying all that much because 90% of my diet has been popcorn. Regardless, my Chicken Fettuccine was pretty good. Now we're all onto the next step, which is, of course, writing the paper. I'm writing the Intro, Conclusion and editing it all, which is awesome! I love editing stuff! In fact, in High School, I would get the school paper and write endless comments and point out every typo and stuff, then return my "Reader's Comment Issue" back to the newspaper staff in the middle of class. Needless to say, the quality of the Grandview Chronicle increased exponentially.

So I feel its pretty fitting, since the 9 year anniversary of 9/11 was Saturday, to end this post with a little Patriotism. So, GO AMERICA!

(image: http://theghostofmoonlightgraham.com/tag/carlos-gonzalez/)

Polonius is the Man

Well, actually Polonius isn't really the man. I just felt weird saying Ophelia was the Man... Anyways, about that essay we read. Just in case you've forgotten, Thomas G. Plummer wrote about Individuation and that finding out exactly who one is, one is able to avoid being controlled and find greater fulfillment and greater happiness. John J. Murphy disregarded many aspects of Plummer’s views and argued that “formal education becomes unhealthy when it is consciously directed toward ‘individuation,’ the discovery of the uniqueness of self” and that we need to look outward to learn and appreciate ourselves. I, personally, believe that they have both missed the mark. Education should be focused on cultivating new ideas but must work its way towards that goal as a student progresses.

Plummer’s suggested style of teaching is the ideal; however, it is difficult to control. As students continue throughout their education, they should be encouraged to pursue routes and but should cover a certain curriculum that will serve them later when they enter the real world and leave the academic world. I took piano from a teacher that would ask me what I thought of everything from what a certain measure meant to why a song had a certain chord progression. By doing so and finding patterns in the music that most people just plow through I was able to accelerate my learning exponentially, but I couldn’t take lessons from him until after I had another teacher who I had to learn to trust, teach me the basics of reading and playing music. By learning in this order I was able to better understand an idea that is complex and unexplainable and was given the opportunity to make my way from student to a peer with all the tools necessary to exceed the master.

Murphy is much more controlling, which is necessary to learn the basics of everything from life in general from parents, to a specific study. Well I feel like that's enough writing... How about a comic as an apology for that being so long winded?

(http://xkcd.com/773/)

Elder Eyring is the Man

Last night we were asked to annotate a speech given by Elder Eyring back in October 1997. It was called "A Child of God." It would probably have been more fittingly titled, "How to Overcome Pride" or "Success through Humility" but who am I to judge? I'm not a General Authority. The talk itself was excellent, and of course, so were my annotations, probably...
So my focus was an idea we discussed in class about "getting on the same page" through rhetoric. Elder Eyring's talk was fascinating by dissecting it looking for ways that he persuaded and simultaneously trying to get his audience on the "same page."

By connecting his themes to his specific audience of college age students, he was able to better persuade them. Most interestingly, Elder Eyring focused on learning and becoming educated while still remaining humble. Often, learning leads to pride, but Elder Eyring's discussion of how education becomes a means through which we can perfect ourselves showed the importance of what his audience was focusing on.

I also was impressed by how little Elder Eyring condemned pride, instead he focused on the rewards for stripping oneself of pride. He spends minimal time on the negative and spends the majority of his talk on the rewards. And as studies often show, positive emotions outweigh negative.

All and all, I would give his talk and 8 out of 10.

(picture from: http://valleyforgewoman.blogspot.com/2010/06/relief-society-lesson-recap-pottstown.html)