Exploration #35

I saw this exploration first done by Blakely, and have been looking forward to trying it for myself.  The exploration says to use my imagination and create a portrait of my city or town in which everything I encounter is exaggerated, magical, or altered from reality.

Instead of doing my city or town, I’ve decided to do this exploration on the place where I’ve spent more time in my nineteen years than any other place-my hometown golf course.  I have to be careful doing this, so all you non-golfer readers can understand what I’m talking about.

Chandler municipal is a treacherous place full of teeny tiny greens and tree-lined fairways.  The ninth hole contains all of this mayhem, including water and sand traps to boot.  I’ll redo this hole with some nifty magical qualities for my portrait.

Trouble can start from the very first shot hit off the tee box, the drive.  If the drive isn’t hit straight, it can go out of bounds to the left or into trees on the right.  So let’s just put up a forcefield to the left.  If the ball hits the forcefield, it will simply drop safely back in bounds.  Now we have to deal with the trees.  If the ball is hit into their bark-ish clutches, the leprechauns will simply deposit it safely back into the fairway, along with a pot of gold.

This hole is a par four (meaning a four would be a good score, a three would be excellent, and a five would be a disappointment) so my second shot should end up on the green if struck properly.  If I hit it a little off, I usually end up short and right of the green.  Unfortunately, there’s a nasty bush there waiting to ensnare unsuspecting Titleist balls.  How about if the ball ends up in the bush, it falls down a pretty little tunnel the leads out somewhere near the cup? Yup, sounds good to me! Now, if I hit my second shot way off, it could end up long and left, where a sand trap lurks.  I’ll take out all that gritty sand and fill it instead with popcorn.  I feel popcorn would be much easier to hit out of.  And if I get a bad lie, I can always eat my ball a clear path to the hole!

All that’s left for this ninth hole is putting the ball into the cup for my par.  I flatter myself on being an excellent putter, so I’m not going to give myself any freebies here…except to maybe double the size of the hole 😉

Well That’s Ironic.

I found two ironic images that were just too good to choose between, so I’m including them both.

                                                                   

Ha! The definition of irony that I think best applies to the first image is that of  situational irony, which is a sharp contradiction between how things are and how they are supposed to be.  First of all, why would a fitness center even have an escalator? Secondly, why are all of the gym members (I’m assuming they are going in to work out-they’re wearing gym clothes and carrying in gym bags) using the escalator?! Is the idea that since for the next hour or so they will be working their butts off they should be able to relax until the last possible moment, when they enter the door? Why not get some cardio in before you even get inside? Save a little time maybe?

The second image is funny as well, but in a different way.  I like our definition of situational irony best for this image as well. A cemetery is supposed to be a serious, reflective place.  This sign ads a small measure of (incredibly dry) humor to the scene.  It’s slightly morbid, which is why it caught my eye.  The dead end sign is positioned right in front of a cemetery.  I’ve never thought of “dead end” signs as frightening, but from now on whenever I see one they will hold a slightly more sinister meaning.  At first glance, I was thinking to myself, “Oh how wrong.”  Then, after I thought about it for a minute, it became more and more funny. Obviously, this is a dead end.  Everyone in that particular end is dead.  I want to draw a little cartoon ghost underneath the lettering.

Memory Palace

We are experiencing with Memory Palaces this week! There are five steps to doing this, and I tried to work really hard on visualizing each part.

1) Choose your palace.

I chose my house back in Chandler. I also needed to choose a specific route in my palace.  When I come home, I always walk in through the garage, into the utility room, and on down the hall to the kitchen to stuff my face.

2) List distinctive features

The first notable feature is the utility room door (entering the utility room from the garage). It is wooden and scared. My mother doesn’t worry about making it pretty since no one ever sees this part of our house. There is doggie door that we had to install after my cat outgrew his kitty door, the fatty. Inside the utility room, I see the washer and the dryer.  The washing machine is fairly modern, but the dryer is like from the 80’s, and is a horrendous mustard yellow color.  Good choice, newly-wed parents. To the right is the dirty clothes hamper and propped up behind the door is a BB gun used for sniping squirrels as they scurry across our roof (yeah, that’s what I do for fun..). The hallway is lined with family pictures. There are entirely too many to list here. Most of them involve me (only child) and that would be very boring for everyone else. Anyways, finally we get to the kitchen. The first thing I see is the glorious chilled food holder, the refrigerator. It’s cream colored, also from the 80’s.

3) Imprint the palace on your mind

I’m a fairly visual person, so this wasn’t too challenging.

4) Associate!

We are supposed to use ethos, pathos, and logos as our test. Ethos is the character or authority of an author of a text. Their ethos is their “doorway” into our trust. If they are trustworthy, we will trust their writing. We can peer into their authority using the doggy door. Pathos is an appeal to the audience’s emotions.  That tacky yellow dryer sure appeals to an emotion of mine-hate. Logos is an appeal to what the audience finds reasonable or logical. It is perfectly logical to shoot those squirrels as they trespass across our roof.

5) Visit your palace

Yup, it works!

 

Unified Unity Among the Units

Dr. Hessler commented on my post about the visit to the National Memorial Museum:

OKC National Memorial Museum Visit

HB HesslerFollowFeb 12, 7:31 pm

Yes: Unity is such an important theme for this museum. You observed that the flag symbolizes national unity, not just the local unity of the Oklahomans affected by the tragedy.

I realize we had only a short time for our initial exploration, but can you recall some other kinds of unity represented in the museum?

My response to this is yes, of course I can! Aside from national and local unity, I observed a lot of unity among the volunteers.  There were many pictures of policemen, firemen, construction workers, and what appeared to be just ordinary, every day people volunteering and searching for survivors. There was a unity among these volunteers as they all worked towards a common goal and a common hope. There was also a unity between the survivors and the families of the victims as they went through their own personal stages of mourning.

Exploration #2

For my next exploration I chose Exploration #10.  It instructed me to choose an everyday object, anything at all. I’m to look at the top half for fifteen minutes and write down everything I notice about it, then do the same for the bottom half. I chose to obsessively stare at the picture by my bed. The picture is of me and my best friend/ex-boyfriend before heading off to my senior prom.

Top half: This half of the pic definitely has more going on in it, because that’s where our faces are. As I was on prom night, I’m mesmerized by the feathers on the bodice of my dress.  People probably thought I had issues when I kept playing with them all night. Not the best prom dress choice for a blonde.  Anywho, my dress is all dark colors, so Alex’s white shirt under his black tux really jumps out.  It’s the first thing your eyes are drawn to in the picture.  Alex still has his epic Justin Bieber hair, a fact he is rather ashamed of now in retrospect.  The picture was taken at my grandma’s house, where I got ready for prom.  I can see the familiar lines of her mantle behind us.

Bottom half: The first thing I see is our hands.  He’s holding my hand so that my corsage shows (at my mother’s request).  I notice now his boutonniere and my corsage don’t really match.  The result of being from different towns and using two different  florists I suppose.  His arm is around my waist, but he’s doing something funny with his fingers.  What is he doing? I think he’s playing with the beading on my dress.  The bottom half is kind of in shadow.  You can barely tell that the skirt of my dress is red.  Some of my grandma’s fake flowers on her fireplace brick is peeking through in the bottom left corner.

Examining this picture for so long didn’t really make me notice more things necessarily from the picture, but brought back memories from that day that I had forgotten about.  It’s hard to believe this event happened almost a year ago.

Prom2011

OKC National Memorial Museum Visit

“Identify at least one specific message or argument made within the museum through visual rhetoric.”

On Wednesday, February 1 my comp class got to go tour the OKC National Memorial Museum.  It basically turned into a self guided tour, and we were encouraged to focus on a section of the museum that really captivated our interest or spoke to us individually.  The whole thing is set up like a time line, and I got so caught up in the flow of it that I actually ended up walking through and observing most of the exhibits fairly closely.  I do wish we could have had more time to explore, however.

The whole museum can be consider a giant example of visual rhetoric, and there were so many beautiful and meaningful pictures, artifacts, and even videos to choose from.  There was one picture that I kept returning to though, so I’ll focus on it.

Un-Forgotten Flag

Incase you can’t tell from looking, the picture shows three men in three different uniforms working together with an American flag hanging from some metal rubble in the background.

The message I get from this picture is one of unity.  It doesn’t matter that one man is a firefighter, one is a police man (maybe) and one looks like a plain construction worker.  They are all working towards the common goal of finding a survivor.  These men are probably all from Oklahoma, although I know workers were sent from out of state too.  So the American flag in the background ties in our unity as a nation into this photo as well.  It’s like all of America looks on, hoping with them.  I believe this is just the message that the museum intended to convey by displaying this photograph.

Exploration Blog #1

Scary Robot

I had to do an exploration from the category  “writing about or documenting”. I decided to do the very first exploration in the book (the author even tells us we can do the explorations in any order, but I can’t help it). The exploration is titled “Right Where You are Sitting” and instructs me to write ten things about where I’m sitting right now that I haven’t noticed when I first sat down.  I am to use my senses, do it quickly, and don’t censor.

Well, I’m sitting in my friend Alanna’s apartment.

1) I didn’t notice the vacuum cleaner was beside my side of the couch.  It’s a scary looking robot.

2) She has nail holes in her wall.

3) Her little table-sized Christmas tree is STILL up, little twinkle lights and all.

4) Her carpet is cleaner than mine.

5) She has like 7 different chapsticks on her coffee table. She must go through a lot of chapstick.

6) Her shower curtain is in her trashcan.  There might be a funny story there I need to hear.

7) Those are MY shoes under the couch.  I was wondering where those went.

8) I’m still sitting on her laptop cord, but am too lazy to get off…or notice much.

9) She has stolen my book, “The Help”. I just noticed it on the coffee table too.

10) She has a little bag of some kind of white powdery substance. It looks questionable.

*turns out that was just salt to clean her new lip piercing 😀