The first article that I read was 6 Supposedly Fun Activities Nobody Actually Enjoys, written by Adam Tod Brown. This article was exactly what it title sounds like, an evaluation of six things that people usually would think are fun that actually aren’t. It is a very cynical paper and is written in an informal tone. The audience of this article is the everyday person; especially those who would think these activities are fun. The activities that Adam evaluates are parades, movies in a park, wave runners, working outdoors, national parks, and finally fireworks with fireworks being the most over rated and parades being the least. The article is written similarly to how I feel someone would speak, if they were talking about the same topic. The writer does use humor of exaggeration to make the article funny, but the overall tone is negative.

            The second article that I evaluated is My Other Car Is a Midlife Crisis by Drew Magary from GQ. This article is about something that every “real” man must do; buy a minivan. It argues that buying a minivan isn’t the end of your legendary rule as the ultimate manly male. The audience of this article is clearly middle-aged men who have bought a minivan or are currently thinking about it. It has a very informal approach and used crude humor and exaggeration to appeal to the reader’s humor. The tone comes off at first as a little negative but can soon be described as arrogant. This arrogance adds to the overall humor of the article, which is clearly the writers intention. Both these articles were about regular everyday things and how they are viewed by society.  

http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-supposedly-fun-activities-nobody-actually-enjoys/

http://www.gq.com/news-politics/mens-lives/201204/buying-minivan-men-masculinity-gq-april-2012

When I pulled the freshly baked cookies from the oven, noticed that they were not cookies… they were chocolate chip less. My mom asks from the other room, “Ian how did they turn out?” It is to my extreme embarrassment that I have to tell her how my first attempt at baking actually turned out. This memory of mine is a funny story but it is also a valuable lesson that is accompanied by a good laugh. The lesson is one of persistence, a lesson of not giving up when met with failure. While my failure to put chocolate chips into my batch of cookies is not really anything more than a slight mistake, I remember it made me think more about other aspects of my life that were just a smidge more important. I thought about my schoolwork, my athletics teams, and the general idea of reaching my goals.

Ian Margot           

Do you remember the first time you made something in the kitchen? Back when you were just a small child and you wanted to help your parents make dinner, and the wonder of making food took over? I do. I have always thought cooking was amazing. It is like a form of art, the best form of act actually because you get to eat it after! The first dish I ever made without any assistance from my mother, sister, father, or cookbook was a homemade batch of chocolate chip cookies. I was so proud of myself, so in awe of my accomplishment that I didn’t realize I had forgotten a crucial ingredient until after the first batch was done. I had forgotten the chocolate chips. I know, how could I forget the one thing that makes this cookie a chocolate chip cookie? To be honest, I still don’t know, but I do know that no one was more surprised to notice that my lumps of baked dough were just that, lumps of baked dough, than me. That happened 5 years ago, and since then I’ll have you know that my chocolate chips cookies have gotten a lot better. Probably because I actually put the chocolate chips in them, but hey who knows. When I look back on this memory, I always think to myself, I failed when I set out on my own. I’m not saying that my failure was all that crucial or important. It actually had no effect on anything in my life besides the fact that I found out I wasn’t that bad of a baker. While I did fail, I also succeed at the same time because I didn’t give up. When I realized my mistake I fixed it, put chocolate chips in the dough, and it all over again, this time to find the sweet warm taste of success. 

My two examples of fallacies are 1) The Miami Heat have the best fans in the NBA, you should become one. This is a bandwagon appeal. 2) LeBron James is a horrible person and NBA player for leaving the Cavilers and going to the Heat. This is an ad hominem fallacy. And a fallacy in something I've read come from the essay Anti-Intellectualism by Grant Penrod. He makes a hasty generalization when he says "...society looks down on those individuals who help it to process..."This is a hasty generalization because it reaches a conclusion based off insufficient evidence. the writer only looked for examples of intellectuals being attack and none where they were praised and celebrated for their achievements.

I don’t know how many of you guys have TVs or watch them, but I think I’m safe in assuming that all of y’all do.  I don’t watch my tv all that much. Yes, it is on, but I’m hardly ever paying attention to it. Most of the time I am doing something else and am to preoccupied. There is one channel on the local channel listings that when it’s on I always pay attention to, and that is channel 14.

            Channel 14 is the local movie channel here at Penn State. It shows movies ranging from the really old to the really new. Past films have included The Shawshank Redemption, How to Train Your Dragon, Gladiator, The Hangover 1 and 2, and many more. I really really love this channel. It always plays really entertaining and captivating films. On those occasions where I want to stay in for the night or simply want to sit back relax and watch a good film with my buddies. Now that it is really winter and really cold outside, staying in and having something that is going to make for a fun night that doesn’t require any effort is a welcome relief.

           

            Now channel 14 is not always playing a good movie. Sometimes, in fact, it is playing a movie that has absolutely zero appeal to me and I change the channel as fast as possible. This is a rare occurrence and not something I overly worry about when I am looking for a movie to watch. While that does not happen too often, what does happen quite a bit is that a movie I have already seen too many times to count is playing. This has the same effect as a movie I could careless about. I don’t want to watch it again. Unfortunately I often find myself doing just that because there’s nothing else on. But in general channel 14 rocks and I am a huge fan.

            

Tonight’s post is about the weather, specifically State College’s weather. I think its safe to assume that it rains EVERYDAY here! Haha obviously I’m kidding but you know what I mean. It rains most days of the week and if its not raining its dark and dreary outside so you feel like it’s raining anyway. Being from Texas, the land of heat, heat, and more heat, I’m very used to the sun. And I have to admit; this constant rain “Grinds My Gears’ a little. The other day it was an amazing 55ish degrees, sunny, no wind… the perfect day in probably everyone’s opinion. It was a welcome break to the constant rain and dreariness. I don’t really like rain. It’s wet, cold, and once your wet it ruins relaxing unless you change. Of course, there are umbrellas, but hey, I always forget them. I just feel like rain is blah. Its not as fun as snow or as welcoming as sunshine.

            I love snow. It’s awesome. The cold is so refreshing, the snow doesn’t get you wet, unless you lay in it, and it is so beautiful when it covers everything. When I accepted my admittance to Penn State I thought that the winter would be full of snow. That’s what I just assumed and what all my friends told me. We have had some snow, but not nearly as much as I would like. There has been a lot of rain though.

            Because I don’t like always talking about things that “grind” my gears, in later posts I will be including things that “turn” my gears? In other words ill be blogging about things I really like and that are awesome.