What Are You Thinking?

Dear Teenagers,

Your life is being wasted. Stop worrying about what outfit to wear or what music to listen to. Stop doing drugs so that you don't feel left out. That guy who broke your heart is not thinking about you anymore, so stop thinking about him. That pathetic girl you look at in the mirror is not who you are meant to be.

Some things in life are harder than others. But this I know for sure. If you believe in yourself and hope for a better day, things will get easier than they have been. Trust in yourself and in those who love you and maybe stop worrying what other people think.

What would life be like without that designer purse or the perfect boyfriend? Stop stressing and find out.

We all mistakes. Admitting that is the first step. Now take another and live life now.

KESWICK LIFE

Diagnoses: Uncomfortable

Saturday February 5^th 2011, a rectangle room surrounded by white (or ivory) walls, six rows of ten chairs, a large desk facing us all, as we face each other. These are the surroundings of those who sit in the Woodbine Medical Centre in the small town of Keswick Ontario. A doctor’s office is seen by many to be a place to dread and avoid at all costs, but when we get sick we have no choice but to consult medical attention, which results in having to wait in the doctor’s office. This is not only a communal space we are used to in a large city like Toronto, this doctor’s office is located in what is considered today to be a small town. The way Keswick is constructed, populated and seen by city lifestyles are all factors in what defines it as a small town compared to larger cities, and this directly affects how this doctor’s office may be different from others (Rybczynski 35-50). Concentrating on how the space speaks will be focused around the objects affecting behaviours of the small town community, how the space itself affects our emotions and feelings, and why a doctor’s office has a feeling of conformity and normality when in truth most fear it more than any other community gathering. The doctor’s office is a space known by the world to be one of health, and safety, and as a small community we are connected more intimately, and in turn our space of health and safety differ in other ways.

Many behaviours and actions that are seen regularly in this environment are due to the objects and space that surround the people at that particular time. We have become so used to the normality of the space that we no longer see the strangeness, we are no longer able to see the space for what it truly is and how it speaks. The first thing I notice is that as every person walks into the main entrance they all observe those already sitting, maybe they are seeing who to sit furthest away from (the older woman with the heaving cough perhaps), none the less everyone sitting down is greeted with a thorough stare, it is not only the doctor who performs examinations. After each person has checked in and asked to take a seat that is when musical chairs begins. Interestingly enough you would think that most people do choose to sit isolated from the rest, but there are always odd people who mix up the normality of the environment. This translates from William H. Whyte‘s thoughts in the film The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, and how a good town is able to provide comfort even with the presence of oddness. Other behavioral concerns that appear are those surrounding the dreaded magazines. They are in every doctor’s office as supposed entertainment, and they usually include last year’s collection of Reader’s Digests and some House & Home catalogues, none the less why is it that there is always an obvious competition for these golden magazines? When you really think about it, this is a health environment dedicated to keeping the small town healthy, and meanwhile they have us sifting through magazines that heinously sick people have been sifting through for years. This irony does not only apply to the filthy magazines but to concept of the doctor’s office entirely. We are all sitting within disease reach of each other and we have to wait in this small rectangular space for (as I calculated with 12 patients) an average of 35 minutes, all in all the doctor’s office allows us to respond in different ways, whether it is sit on the opposite side of the room or the seat closest to the magazines, in the end the objects and surroundings are what drive us to understand the behaviours taking place around us.

“Individuality [is erected by] the intensification of emotional life due to the swift and continuous shift of external and internal stimuli” (Simmel, 31). Our emotions and the way we feel in our surroundings are just as important to address as the way we behave. In the case of a doctor’s office we all have different emotions but for the most part they surround the same category. Fear can be categorized as fear for the unknown; we are all emotionally affected before we even walk in the door. We go to a doctor’s office for concern of our health and bodies, and this kind of emotional presence changes how we enter a room. Even the way the nurse calls your name, and what the doctor will have to say about your current situation is linked to why we feel the way we do. There is also the fear of embarrassment; no one likes to be poked and prodded to find out what’s “wrong with you” and in the end your emotions are specifically linked to the room, the space and the environment as a whole. The bland walls and neutral colouring are chosen to be calming and relaxing, but these surroundings do scream other things that can be giving us the feeling of unease. The closeness of everyone together is a comfort for most metropolis areas (Simmel 30-45) but in the case of a health vicinity the atmosphere of dense intimacy can be very unsettling. This continuously present uncomfortable feeling also connects to how we react to others in the room. “People do not converse in large public spaces” (Whyte). The neatly placed décor and shuffled magazines, and the blandness of the walls can be seen as triggers that make us think negatively towards others. We observe that the girl that came in after you have been called in first, and this not only upsets you but drives the nerves and fears that have already set in. Case in point that we are labeled as a small town, but we are trained to orient to the behaviours surrounding that label (Rybczynski 35-50). We are a fairly small town but that does not mean we must resort to sitting in a small rectangular space only inches from one another, but that is the way it has always been; white walls, identical chairs, no breathing room.

There are six rows of ten seats linked together, and an opposing row of two against the wall, each chair is dark brown in colour and is perhaps meant to match the drab walls and plain carpeting. The only décor are the many signs and posters of the potential diseases we are likely to get and how to treat them. The constant reminders of death and disease plaster the walls and once we read far enough to see that “It can happen to you” it should not be a mystery why people dread the doctor’s office. There are many places in a community that are focused around large groups of people coming together for a similar reason. The grocery store, bank, dental office and things alike are all examples of urban gatherings that could be compared to the environment of the doctor’s office, the main difference that appeals to my eyes is that we use the space as if it is so personal and normal to us but where we go to seek medical attention speaks to us in a very foreign language.

The doctor’s office is a space known by the world to be one of health, safety and safety, and as a small community we are connected more intimately, and in turn our space of health and safety differ in other ways. The way we interact with each other is blurred by the preconceived idea of what the doctor’s office space is like. We are all blinded by the stereotypical objects around us that we are unable to act differently than the rest of the people in the room. It is this kind of community space that shapes a small town to behave a particular way, and the way we feel about doctor’s is linked to the doctor’s office but in its entirety, the space is what brings us to our concluding feelings and behaviours. When it comes to following the leader, we are preceding the pattern by orienting to small town behaviour in small town spaces. The diagnoses of the doctor’s office is simple, before we get diagnosed we submit ourselves to the exam of others.

Fight for the Cure

Fight for the cure, and stand up for the weak. Give the gift of hope, and inform others on how we can beat this disease. There are so many ways to contribute to a foundation or cause, you don’t have to donate hundreds of dollars or give body parts. All you need to donate is your time and care. The Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation needs all the help it can get and its goal is to raise awareness and one day find a cure. This post is not to inform you about this foundation, when it was founded and all that other biographical information, this post is about why it’s important to me, and why it should be important to you. When it comes to my political engagement with this cause, it comes down to more than just politics. Being political will not find a cure, and as for my political engagement, is that the point? I consider informing the people I love that this is an issue, is as political as I need to be. I engage myself with this foundation because breast cancer is a disease that has hit close to home, and fighting that disease is an engagement I’m ready to step up for.

When life throws a curve ball, we can’t strike out. Leading a life filled with settling isn’t a life that I’m ready to live. Don’t settle for the problems and hurtles we may have to face; this activist project has so many support systems both political and social. Being a small part of both, is a small contribution, for a big cause. Chuck Klosterman is a man I have mentioned before, he is rude and honest and has no filter to his thoughts. In his book “Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs” he ends one captivating chapter with this line “That’s all I want, and that’s why I can’t have it”(Klosterman 12). He’s wrong. If this is all I want, to have engaged in a cause that helps me better understand my family’s struggles, then I’ll have it. No matter what gets in the way.

Works Cited

"Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation: About CBCF." Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation: Breast Cancer Awareness, Support and Charity. Web. 22 Nov. 2009. .

Klosterman, Chuck. Sex, drugs, and cocoa puffs a low culture manifesto. New York: Scribner, 2003. Print.

Culture Jam

Reach for the clouds, the sky’s the limit, aim high and dream big. Yes, aim higher than your arms will reach, and culture jamming attempts to go against mainstream cultural institutions or advertisements and aims to react against social conformity. There are many different advertisements that represent the reactions to certain ideas and ways of life. One that caught my attention was a poster to be put into local schools across Canada. The advertisement below just shows how some have an opinion about having commercials and advertisements placed in school facilities, and perhaps suggesting that kids are hypnotized and brainwashed into buying into certain things. In the book “Understanding Comics” by Scott McCloud, he talks about what images can mean, and what the words describing them relate to. In this advertisement it says, “Aim higher, campaign for commercial free schools” and if this advertisement had a sequence of pictures, it could tell a story of how this culture jamming phenomenon has to do with schools. McCloud once said, “If the words lock in the “meaning” of a sequence, then the pictures can really take off” (McCloud 159). He’s right, if the words of culture jamming have true meaning, it can really take off, and aim high.

Works Cited

"Culture Jamming -." Google Videos. Web. 22 Nov. 2009. .

"Culture Jamming." UW Departments Web Server. Web. 22 Nov. 2009. .

Mccloud, Scott. Understanding Comics The Invisible Art. New York: Harper Paperbacks, 1994. Print.

The Consumer Matrix

Consumers. We all consume a daily intake of sources. We all consume a daily intake of reality, a harsh reality known as over-consumption. On November 25^th, 2009 our culture will try and capture the attention of the world and put a halt on the over-consumers of this planet. The plan is to encourage everyone to buy absolutely nothing all day long, as well as turning off all appliances including your cell phones and computers. Do something different, do something for your planet. Park your car in the driveway and park your butt on the couch and reach out to the world, by turning off, tuning down, and living simple. The simplest things in life are of course “free”, but we will pay for our consumption with our lives. Marshall McLuhan is a man of many opinions about how the world adjusts to the new technologies of our world, and he once said, “Any approach to environmental problems must be sufficiently flexible and adaptable to encompass the entire environmental matrix, which is in constant flux”. If he is right, and our environmental matrix is constantly changing, our matrix will potentially fluctuate into something we can’t control. Let’s adapt to this cause, and be our own matrix.

Works Cited

"Buy Nothing Day | Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters." Adbusters Culturejammer Headquarters | Journal of the mental environment. Web. 18 Nov. 2009. .

"The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan." NextNature.net - Exploring the Nature caused by People. Web. 18 Nov. 2009. .

Neutralizing, the Net

NET NEUTRALITY

The Internet, WWW, Web, World Wide Web, computer network, data bank, data network, electronic highway, electronic mail, email, global village, information superhighway, information technology, online community, virtual community, virtual library, virtual reality. There is a mass amount of information flying around, and who’s to say that it is ours? And whether or not, it is here to stay.

The World Wide Web’s battlefield includes these main contenders: you, oh and those Internet dudes. The struggle to prevent net neutrality, the ability we have to control our web, will never come to a settlement, while certain problems are still on the battleground. Piracy, political information and copyright are some of the featured problems at this time. It is becoming harder and harder to define the term public, and easier to break the barrier of private. On one side we have the consumers, creating more and more obstacles to contain their private environment, and access others. On the other we have “them”, these are those who will do just about anything to stop us from owning our own web information. Why? You must be asking that question. Why would they want to prevent us from being our digital selves? Well, that’s simple. They want you to pay for your Internet, not to expand, but limit your access to the World Wide Web. Corporations want to be in complete control of your digital environment, or for some, your digital lives. Lawrence Lessig, the Internet enthusiast once said, “As the Internet integrated into ordinary life, it has changed things. Some of these changes are technical-The Internet has made communication faster, it has lowered the cost of gathering data, and so on” (Lessig 7). I disagree with this. We pay less for what we get, right now. But soon, will you settle with the fact that you will give more than you get? And as for our lives, as Lessig says, are they really all that “ordinary”?

Works Cited

InternetSecure. Web. 18 Nov. 2009. .

Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture The Nature and Future of Creativity. New York: Penguin (Non-Classics), 2005. Print.

Warner has many brothers

Warner Brother’s describes themselves as “a fully integrated, broad-based entertainment company – is a global leader in the creation, production, distribution, licensing and marketing of all forms of creative content and their related businesses.” Warner Brother’s studios owns hundreds of other companies that all have to do with the entertainment industry, some include: Warner Brother’s pictures, The CW television network, DC Entertainment Inc, and any well known movie or television program you watch today. Not only that, but they have a chain of movie theatres across the globe. There are so many owners, and companies that it is hard to keep up with the ongoing development of the Warner Brother’s studios. They are a prime example of hardcore cross media ownership.

Media Hegemonies can take on an entirely new meaning when it refers to a major media company. Hegemony refers to the power of a single group that essentially leads and dictates the other groups of the same society, in other words; cross media ownership, and yes there are some benefits and “pros” to cross media ownership. But few include media growth. Let me explain. In the book Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, he discusses the implications of piracy, but he also represents the insight into owning more than we can handle. “I have become increasingly amazed by the power of this idea of intellectual property, and more importantly, its power to disable critical thought by policy makers and citizens” (Lessig 12). When cross media ownership becomes a large part of a company, they become bias in all of their decision making, whether it is to cancel a show, or produce more of a certain product. Like Lessig once said “There has never been a time in our history when more of our “culture” was as “owned” as it is now” (Lessig 18). When it comes to crossing the media, why do we cross their ownership? We don’t, because most of us are unaware that when you deal with Warner’s, you’re dealing with all entertainment.

Works Cited

Lessig, Lawrence. Free Culture The Nature and Future of Creativity. New York: Penguin (Non-Classics), 2005. Print.

Warnerbros.com | The Official Site For Warner Bros. Web. 18 Nov. 2009. .

Culture Participation

To be involved in our culture can be an issue of so many meanings. Whether you are a blogger, a writer, a facebooker, a creator, a gamer, you are a cultural contributor. To define culture is like trying to define the sky, it is something that is larger than our knowledge of it. People of the world come together to invent and create new ways to live life, to experience living. I am involved in many of these categories of culture, but the one I am most deeply connected with is social networking. I am currently on facebook, myspace and with the perseverance I have gathered recently I am writing and continuing with a blog.

No matter how you look at it, all cultural elements affect the public and how we interact with one another. My personal involvement may not have an impact on anyone, but who’s to say it doesn’t? I create ways of communicating my thoughts, just like how Stauber and Rampton created a mindset that contributing to the public should be for the truth, and the better of society. In their book “Toxic Sludge is good for you” they mention that they “want the public at large to recognize the skilled propagandists of industry and government who are affecting public opinion” (Stauber and Rampton 16). But how can any of us recognize what’s real and what has been manipulated? I myself have been convinced that blogging is something natural and although it is my opinion, no one will know the difference. Public Relations is a big part of culture, do I want part of that? Of course not, because it is currently being described as what a democracy doesn’t need. Journalism is what provoked me to start writing in the first place, and encouraged me to participate in today’s culture. I won’t let social networking be the demise of my imagination, or let public relations be the reason I continue. Let’s all participate and see where life takes us.

Works Cited

Stauber, John, and Sheldon Rampton. Toxic Sludge Is Good For You: Lies, Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry. US: Center for Media, 1995. Print.

Truth

What is Real?

What is propaganda? What is fake? What is real? What is a lie? What is the truth? Can you really rely on media to give you the answer?

What makes you twitch, what gets you mad, what makes you ask the burning questions? Is it the news, that Coca Cola advertisement, that man holding up the sign “Honk if you love Jesus”? This world is full of fake news, but how do you separate the real from the fictitious? Fact is fact, a lie is a lie, when it comes to propaganda they are one in the same.

When someone produces a media based message, and sends it out to the world, withholding specific details and information, it is a strategy. It is something that these people do, not naming any names…politicians *cough, and they do it so that we are basically hypnotized to believe that all the facts are included. Our minds are trained to believe that if the information has become a symbol to the public, it must be fact. The hardest thing to grasp about corporately funded news is that they imply to trick us. They set out to find new words and terms that sly away from fact and bring us to the only other alternative, belief.

How do you know what I’m saying is true? You don’t. But you better believe it.

Example:

THE STORY:

An email circular claimed that President Bush had the lowest IQ in presidential history, so the typing fingers of every journalist not currently employed by Fox began twitching with anticipation.The story claimed the Lovenstein Institute of Scranton conducted a four-month study of President Bush's IQ levels and concluded he ranked at a solid 91 due to his lack of grasp over the English language, limited use of vocabulary and lack of scholarly achievements, unless you count being able to say the alphabet backwards after doing five straight keg stands.

The Truth:

Proving that The Guardian newspaper and Doonesbury cartoonist, Gary Trudeau treat email forwards with the same level of skepticism as your mom, both picked up the story and ran with it. Had they bothered to check the source of the email, they would have traced it back to the reputable news source LinkyDink.com, and the original press release, which claimed that Dr. Lovenstein "lives in a mobile home in Scranton, Pennsylvania running an Internet business called College Degrees for Sale.”

Works Cited

"7 Clearly Fake News Stories That Fooled The Mainstream Media | Cracked.com." Cracked.com ? America's Only Humor & Video Site Since 1958. Web. 07 Oct. 2009. .

Media Literacy

Literally Literacy

The dictionary’s definition of the concept of media literacy is as follows: “Media literacy is the process of accessing, analyzing, evaluating and creating messages in a wide variety of media modes, genres and forms.”

That is correct for the most part, but it is so much more than that. To expand on the idea of media literacy is to dive into the media world itself, because how we interpret the media can literally change how it is written. For example if a billboard has millions of people reaching for the phone to contact a company they know their slogan has been a wild success, if little or no feedback derives, they are aware it was a failure. This failure had to do with the media literacy put out by the media itself. Media literacy is the ability to analyze and interpret the meanings of the media world around us, and each one of us has media literacy in our minds, but we all do it differently. In the book “Understanding Comics, the invisible man” by Scott McCloud, he explains to us the meaning of closure. Closure is how we see certain parts of everything around us. In media literacy the human race will see what it wants to see, for example if someone has always hated Rogers the phone company, anytime they see an advertisement they will immediately make their decision due to prior experience. This is another form of closure; we react and put together pieces to come up with our literal idea of the concept.

The literacy of media in my opinion is literally our closure on the media.

Have I really answered the question what is media literacy? Well, what does it mean to you?

Works Cited

Mccloud, Scott. Understanding Comics The Invisible Art. New York: Harper Paperbacks, 1994. Print.

Tallim, Jane. "What is Media Literacy?" Media Awareness Network | Réseau éducation médias. Web. 07 Oct. 2009. .

Defining

Mass Medium

The term mass media can mean so many things to a human being. Truly understanding it’s definition does not mean you understand its effects or what it does to society at large. We coexist together unaware that perhaps its not the mass of the media, perhaps it’s the medium. How we receive our information can come in so many forms; the television, radio, blogs etc. but how we receive it can take on another form; hearing, seeing and so on, and the term mass media means to me that there is a large source of information being delivered to me every hour of everyday.

We are all apart of a medium, we all deliver information and we all pass it on oblivious that we are making an impact. If you watch a television commercial and then brag to your friend about the latest styles at Hollister, you yourself have become a factor of mass media. The way you see the world differs from how the media sees you, it targets you and tries to engage you in its content. Whether or not the media is ready, you’re coming for it.

Works Cited

John, Berger. Ways of Seeing Based on the BBC Television Series. New York: Penguin (Non-Classics), 1990. Print.

Advertisement

Can You Hear Me Now?

The cell phone, such an invention has many uses; its first original function included helping you connect to the people you need to talk to, whenever, wherever. It's the advertisements that haunt us everyday that influence us to pick up our phone, and pay our dues, also known as monthly bills.

Can you hear me now? This trademark slogan is heard by millions of people around the world, and it does not occur to most of those people that the cell phone has taken over our lives. This advertisement has been on television approximately 100 times a day for the past three years, and Verizon Wireless has invested more than $50 billion since the company was formed to increase the coverage and capacity of its national network and to add new services. Verizon Wireless is currently serving 87.7 million customers, and with every advertisement their numbers increase.

Neil Postman once said, "Technology giveth and technology taketh away." Meaning that even though the cell phone has become an essential necessity for most of us, for every advantage it has, there are added disadvantages. But to most, it's all worth the cost in the end, and Verizon has one thing to say about that: "Good."

Works Cited

McAdam, Lowell. "Verizon Wireless Best Network in America." Welcome To Verizon Wireless. Web. 06 Oct. 2009. .

Postman, Neil. "Neil Postman: Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change." Departamento de Matem. Web. 06 Oct. 2009. .

Blogging

Blog Like You Mean It

It feels refreshing, it feels like I am being heard. To write a blog is simple, to write one for purpose is a completely different story. I believe that blogging reflects our unconscious, and what I mean by that is we speak our minds, without really knowing we're revealing much at all. It's a scary thought to most, but for me, it's refreshing.

The public judges people by their appearance, an audience judges blogs by their words. In those words you can describe yourself, someone else, a situation or event, but none the less you are putting your opinion on a billboard that anyone can click the link to. Such importance can show your strengths or your faults, and in writing you show yourself. What makes a good writer? What makes a good blogger? Myths are found in literature everyday, blogs are not about tricking people, but using the power of language to prove a point, to raise a discussion or a question."Even objects will become speech if they mean something"(Barthes 1).

Chuck Klosterman is familiar with the concept of questioning. In his book "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs" he goes into intimate details of what makes us think, what makes us ask the hard stuff. Not once have I ever been afraid to say what I feel, but many times I have been afraid of what people think of my feelings. Klosterman is one of those people who isn't afraid to speak his mind. "Because when push comes to shove, we really don't want to have sex with our friends...unless they're sexy." (Klosterman 6). Blogs are an expression of ideas and mind games, the ideas are what provoke people to continue reading, and the games provoke them to ask why. I am now officially a public figure that is contributing to the public, and it feels good.

Works Cited

Barthes, Roland. "Mythologies." Turk's head review. Web. 07 Oct. 2009. .

Klosterman, Chuck. Sex, drugs, and cocoa puffs a low culture manifesto. New York: Scribner, 2003. Print.

Ecology of Media

Brainwashed

What in the world is that noise? That constant buzzing in our heads that never seems to cease, it is not our brains trying to think up our next blog, or our computer starting up. It is the buzz of the media world that is taking over every inch of space and thought in our lives.

The television has become a universal magnet to people all over the world. If someone does not own a television, it is rarely by choice. The thoughts and perceptive ideas of Marshall McLuhan give us an inside look into what the media is doing to us, or what some people may think, for us. I found myself trying to understand the concept of media becoming an entity of its own, and began contemplating whether it is something that is crucial to our society at large. Whether or not man can come to terms with the fact that technology is no longer a mythical future, it is our now, our present, was something that McLuhan had high hopes for. Cable and satellite television have taken over our world, and McLuhan also stated that the television developed the political sphere.

"TV is revolutionizing every political system in the Western world. For one thing, it's creating a totally new type of national leader, a man who is much more of a tribal chieftain than a politician."

It is everywhere, it is our dependence, and that is what I am personally scared of most. The fact that we rely on the television to help inform us of what is going on in the world around us, and in turn basically developing the easy way out. I agree with McLuhan that we have substantially lost course of our senses, hearing, seeing and touch.

"We live in a transitional era of profound pain and tragic identity quest, but the agony of our age is the labor pain of rebirth."

Television is what engages us in the real world and allows us to participate in our global environment, but the outlet to this source...is it so bad?

Or are we just brainwashed?

Works Cited

McLuhan, Marshall. "The Playboy Interview: Marshall McLuhan." Folk.uio.no. Web. 06 Oct. 2009. .