Oh, Hello There, Monday.

I don't know about you, but Mondays always seem to sneak up and tap me on the shoulder and then when I turn around, they've gone the other way and are standing there, grinning menacingly like a bully waiting to steal my lunch money and shove my head in a toilet. That's what Mondays are like.

You may or may not have this same attitude about Mondays, but nobody seems to be firing on all cylinders the first day of the work/school week, so I'm going to offer a rundown of things you need to know that I may or may not have said during class, or things that--even if I said them--you may or may not have heard, and that you still may or may not see, BECAUSE YOU STILL AREN'T READING MY BLOG! Okay, so the shouting font is probably unnecessary since the students who will actually see it are, in fact, blog-reading students and not the ones who need the memo. But I digress...

Read "A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift for tomorrow. It's in your 50 Essays book. Do a nice fat CRJ for it now that you know what CRJs should and should not include and how you should do them. The cycle of random collections has begun. Be warned. Be prepared. Always.

You've successfully signed up for the following for your rhetorical analysis paper:

TITLE	BLOCK ONE	BLOCK TWO
“The Importance of Being Hated” (Klosterman)	Ruth, Julia, Emily, Shreya, Heather	Kaitlin, Emily
“Super People” (Atlas)	Caroline C, Sarah, Alicia, Taylor, Jessica	Becky, Nadeen, Matt, Teresa, Bridget
“Is Google Making Us Stupid?” (Carr)	Abram, Jenny C, Max, Adam	Megan, Fatima, Jason, Jeneen, Ashna
“Sex, Drugs, Disasters, and …Dinosaurs” (Gould)	Ryan, Ashton, Eric	Dwight, Ryan, Summer, Quinn
“Unsavory Culinary Elitism” (Bruni)	Jenny L, Megan, Meredith	Jack, Alyssa, Jenna
“Bad Food? Tax It, and Subsidize Veggies” (Bittman)	Andrew, Kara	Lauren, Ambriana
“Your Outboard Brain Knows All” (Thompson)	Alison, Sereen	Laura
“Our Vanishing Night” (Klinkenborg)	Alex	Kira
		--
“Curbing Nature’s Paparazzi” (McKlibben)	Caroline A*	--
“Games” (Johnson)	Mitch	--
“Ugly Phrase Conceals Ugly Truth” (Rushdie)	Graham	--
“Authority and American Usage” (Wallace)	Annie	--
“To The Academy with Love from a Hip-hop Fan” (Evelyn)		Pardis

*We've talked.

If you end up wanting to change your topic (sooner rather than later) you may do so but you need to communicate that with me. Some are now off-limits because they're full. Some did not get any bids so they're sad right now and you could change your mind and choose one of those other rejected articles. They are not listed here. I only listed the ones you chose. Annie chose the best one. Period. And she's the only one. So she gets an A. (for choice anyway) But they're all good so you really can't go wrong, just remember what I said about understanding it and seeing rhetorical goodies in it.

Read it bunches and bunches of time this week. Annotate it. Begin drafting your paper. Outline its argument. Outline your argument about its argument. GET. TO. WORK.

We'll hear from our vocab folks tomorrow about this weeks words (see previous post) and those lovely ladies and gentlemen will e-mail me their (creative, smart, and beautifully-formatted) quiz questions by midnight on Wednesday.

Take that, Monday.

Font Snob

Your weekend blog post assignment is open topic. Due at the decided upon time: Sunday 4:00.
What follows is NOT an assignment (but it could be).

I want you to write something of interest, something of substance. I want you to work on including images, links, videos, etc. Blogs have that capability -- make use of it! Also, I want you to spend a little time (I know, you don't have any time. Poppycock.) tweaking your blog and getting to know it better and looking for blogs that you like to read so you can link them and study them and copy certain features of them. Assignment: write something worth reading. Brownie points: become a blogophile like me.

What follows could lead you to your weekend blog post but it could also be fodder to a rip-roarin' good time and/or insightful rhetorical analysis, you know, for fun . Remember, I didn't share this piece with all of you because it is what school and most of society would consider inappropriate, obscene, and offensive. But, hey. It's a stellar example of rhetoric. 

See below for more.

Your little font-argument assignment mentioned a piece of writing by a title with a naughty word in it. It also contains approximately 512 more naughty words, but it's dripping with rhetorical technique so take a look at it if your sensibilities are not easily offended by the kind of language you hear in the hallway every day. It's found at McSweeney's  one of the greatest websites on the planet. They have a iPhone app...just sayin'.

Specifics to consider so this reading has an academic purpose:
Tone and how it is created
Devices and things (metaphor, hyperbole, allusion, etc.)
Syntax and punctuation
Diction choices (swearing, unusual uses of language, words that stand out, etc.)

Browse fonts so you're, at least, vaguely familiar with them and how they look. Otherwise some of what he says won't make sense. He names "Helvetica", "Eurotrash Swish", "Bauhaus", "Gotham", "Avenir", "Univers", and "Papyrus"-- I think that's all of them that he mentions. Does his depiction of these "characters" make sense? Are they (stereotypically, at least) accurate?


He uses language that you may or may not be familiar with from time to time. For instance, do you know what a Stratocaster is? Look it up. Know Johannes Gutenberg? Did you take Euro? What's a fascist and why does he use this word? What does fascism have to do with black turtlenecks? Do you know what "sans serif" means? Check this out. What does it mean? What is a typographer?


Okay. Why did you laugh when you read it?

"Is This Right?"

Many of you have asked me this very question about any number of things -- usually your assignment. You do this because you are conscientious students, grade grubbers, people pleasers, or any combination thereof. With rhetoric, and specifically rhetorical analysis, there really is no one "right" way to do something, no "right" answer. There are, however, many wrong ones and I know you are simply trying to avoid them. So, here:

Rhetorical analysis is just listing what rhetorical strategies an author or speaker uses. FALSE.
Rhetorical analysis is about finding three exactly perfect examples of exactly three devices the speaker or author uses. Again, FALSE. Rhetorical analysis is some mystical process whereby the analysisyzer uncovers the hidden key of rhetoric buried in the work. FALSE. FALSE. FALSE. (epizeuxis)

Rhetorical analysis involves exploring and explaining (read: analyzing) how the author or speaker presents his or her argument and persuades the audience to accept it. It includes what he or she does -- the bending, tweaking, and manipulating of language, images, and ideas -- but it goes beyond this. Far, far beyond this. Analysis means to make an argument about an argument. Analysis means to prove how a certain device, technique, strategy, or tactic does what you say it does in the text at hand. What the effect of a given rhetorical thingy is, and why it is effective in this particular circumstance. So JFK uses antimetabole when he delivers the famous "ask not what your country can do for you..." line, so what? Given the circumstances, the occasion for this argument (EAA Ch1) and the purpose of the speaker, why might he have selected to deliver this line, using these words in this way? Why is it effective? How does that do anything for the audience? How does that do anything to propel his argument? Exploring and answering these questions is analysis.

Don't misunderstand me here, I'm certainly not suggesting that you list a bunch of questions. That isn't the assignment. That isn't analysis, though it is an internal (usually) process of it. You should arrive at statements: conclusions. You, an "analysisyzer", to repeat the faux word I used above, are tasked with making claims about the text in question. Explaining how.

HOW. It's all about the how.

Also, I get an F for FORGETTING vocab again this week. Still, I maintain that learning 5 words is a simple task and learning the definitions (officially) on Thursday still provides enough time to prepare for a quiz the following Monday.  So it's on like Donkey Kong.