Think Links

Links conceal and reveal. They hide a long list of things that lead you from one place to another. For example if you were to compare links to a road trip they would conceal every single road and little side street that you traveled on and reveal your final destination. This is important because links do more than simply push a button. Sure most links are in some form of button, but it is important to understand that there is more to the structure of a link than the simple push of a button. If you go back to the road trip example and add in the factor that you slept for the whole car ride, it doesn't necessarily mean you fell asleep and woke up magically in another place. The driver could have stopped and filled up the gas tank, used the restroom, and maybe went through a drive through somewhere, just because you were asleep the entire time doesn't mean none of this actually occurred. I like to think of links in a similar fashion. They are like a speedy road trip that you slept through and the link did all the travel and work for you.

"Links change the way in which material is read and understood: partly from the mere juxtaposition of the two related texts," (Burbules 105). This "implied correlation a link suggests" can be found on any website. However, for example my homepage happens to be MSN.com. For this blog I chose to follow the "Lifestyle" link and then from there I clicked on the "Glo" link (partly out of curiosity) which was all about fashion and celebrity news. This implies a relationship between what is thought of as the stereotypical or maybe "ideal" lifestyle automatically going hand in hand with fashion. The correlation here is that certain lifestyles and certain fashion goes hand in hand.

"Links do not only express semi relations but also, significantly, establish pathways of possible movement within the Web space, they suggest relations, but also control access to information," (Burbules 105). For example when I go to Amazon.com there are several links to different "stores" within the Website. All of these store links are for stores or private sellers that sell merchandise through amazon. That's why you are not going to find a link for a site like ebay when you are browsing on amazon. They "control" and "suggest" relations so obviously they are not going to "suggest" that you spend your money elsewhere.


Burbules, Nicholas. "Rhetorics of the Web: hyperreading and critical literacy." New York: Routlage, n.d. Print.

CAPITAL LETTERS ARE HARD TO READ

According to Solomon "Punctuation directs tempo, pitch, volume, and the separation of words." Basically he discusses the idea that with punctuation you can communicate almost anything. Taking this into consideration I would say that he feel similarly towards the use of capital letters. They can STAND OUT and draw a reader's FOCUS towards certain areas of the page. You can make something seem very IMPORTANT if it is in all capitals or in some cases you may do the exact OPPOSITE AND LOOSE THE READER'S ATTENTION IF THE INFORMATION SEEMS TOO DIFFICULT OR TOO MUCH WORK TO READ. (Williams mentions in The Non-Designer's Design Book that typeface in all capital letters is more difficult to read so use it cautiously)

I think that the only source of punctuation that actually needs to exists are quotation marks because lots of people would get in trouble for plagiarism if they didn't use them in their writing assignments. Also it creates useful transitions or breaks when incorporating dialogue into a written work. You could get away with things like question marks and periods because you could simply read something and know if it is a question without having a mark and you could simply finish a sentence by using a capital letter at the beginning of the next one.

I'm not as big on punctuation as Solomon is. I think there is enough punctuation that's already out there and just waiting to be used in new and creative ways. You can spice up punctuation with different sizes and fonts to create something new. I believe that if a person is creative and has a reasonable amount of intelligence they can use punctuation in many different ways that suit their specific needs or ideas.

Solomon, Martin. The Power of Punctuation. MIT Press. 28-32. Jstor.org. 9 Sept. 2011. Web.

Rhetorical Psychology

According to Charles A. Hill "representational images tend to prompt emotional reactions and that, once the viewer's emotions are excited, they tend to override his or her rational faculties, resulting in a response that is unreflected and irrational." So if affect transfer is done appropriately one is automatically brainwashed into buying whatever anyone happens to be selling regardless of whether they need it or not. What better way to do that than with steamy erotic photos of two people getting it on? Hypothetically speaking, when using this particular advertising method it is playing towards certain human emotions that trigger a response that will hopefully result in someone buying what they are selling. This advertisement appears to be aimed towards the male audience and not just because it is an ad for cologne. The emotions this photo plays upon are pretty obvious (don't make me say it, my mom might be reading this...) and when a man sees this advertisement he is likely to feel certain emotional reactions that probably result in him being intrigued by what he is viewing. He might subconsciously think something along the lines of, "Check out this hot chick wanting to have sexual intercourse with this dude. Maybe if I smelled like him chicks would want to bone me too." We all like to think that as human beings we are smarter than this, but most of us really aren't. So suck it up and get used to buying eighty dollar cologne because that is the only way you're ever going to get any action (just kidding I actually dig guys who smell bad and go barefoot in public). Anyway, regardless of whether you smell good or not, no one really needs to have cologne, but if you do happen to wear cologne it will probably make you more attractive to the opposite sex (at least according to this particular advertisment and its affect transfer tactics).

As for using "presence" rhetorically in my own life I suppose I would go back to when I was a very small child and wrote letters to Santa. According to Hill "when particular elements are given enough presence, they can crowd out other considerations from the viewer's mind, regardless of the logical force or relevance of those considerations." This is exactly the same tactic I (as a child) had attempted to use whenever I wrote out a christmas list. It would usually go something like this: Dear Santa, if I don't obtain a pony soon I will die! Of course no one was actually going to die, but I thought if I expressed how badly I wanted a pony my parents would overlook the fact that they would have to feed and care for the animal I so badly wanted for ten whole minutes. I guess if I wanted my rhetorical presence to be more effective I should have been more descriptive. Something like: Dear Santa, I want a pony so bad that if I don't get one soon I will become so depressed that I won't be able to eat or sleep or wash my hair and I will eventually die of dysentery.

Hill, Charles A. "The Psychology of Rhetorical Images." Defining Visual Rhetic. Ed. Charles A. Hill and Marguerite Helmers. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004. 25-40

Chris Woods and Evan Rachel Wood for Gucci Guilty. n.d. "Men in Beauty Ads." Stylelist. Web.

SNOW TERROR!

There once was a beautiful, intelligent, young woman named Sara Ehlers who always smelled nice even though she rarely showered. This was because, although she may have been extremely smart, she smoked marijuana. Which is bad and you should never smoke it. Seriously, it’s a gateway drug and you’ll probably die a horrible excruciating death like those college students in Hostel if you continue to smoke it.

One day Sara got her driver’s license and she was very excited. “Horay! I can drive!”

It just so happened that on that particular week in which she obtained her license, it had snowed a significant amount of snow. She didn’t care because for some reason nothing ever seemed like that big of a deal to her. “Oh man it’s snowing,” she said to herself and decided to make some popcorn. Just then her friend called her on the telephone.

“Hello.”

“Sara?”

“Yeah?”

“This is Beth. I just found my old copy of Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail. You should come watch it with me.”

“Ok dude, for sure.”

Sara glanced down at her bag of popcorn and decided to take it with her. Movies and popcorn seemed to go together. So it made sense. She put on her snow boots and went outside.

As she got into her 1985 Monte Carlo (which her friend’s had dubbed The Honey Bucket) she realized that she couldn’t live without her music, even if her friend Beth lived less than five minutes away, she needed her jams.

Ten minutes later (the length of time it took her to locate her Tom Petty c.d.) she was back in The Honey Bucket and ready to travel. Placing the bowl of popcorn in her lap she turned the key. Tom Petty blasted through the speakers Even the losers get lucky sometime… Baby… Even the losers…

Sara proceeded to back out, but something terrible happened! She got stuck in the snow and her popcorn spilled onto the floor of the car!

“Oh no!” Sara exclaimed as she bent down to retrieve the precious kernels. As she collected the spilled popcorn into the palm of her hand she continued to press on the gas in an attempt to free the car from the snow.

This went on for a considerable amount of time. Sara turned up the radio even louder and continued to pick up the popcorn whilst backing out against the blocking snow.

After a few minutes of the same routine, Sara began to hear a noise that sounded a lot different than Tom Petty. It sounded horrible and angry. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. And when Sara looked up from the floor of the car she realized that the noise was coming from her sister Miranda.

Miranda was standing on the porch waving her arms around in an angry manner. Sara wondered why her sister was so angry.

“WHAT I CAN’T HEAR YOU?” Sara hollered.

“What the f@*& are you doing?” Her sister was really mad.

Sara decided that it was probably a good idea to drive away really fast and get out of there, but she couldn’t because of the snow. So she decided to turn the car off and get yelled at by her sister.

Sara got out of the car and asked her sister why she was so mad.

“Dude, what’s your problem?”

“YOU’RE RAMMING DAD’S TRUCK! YOU STUPID B#$%@!”

Sara’s heart stopped in her chest and dropped into her stomach. She turned around slowly to see her father’s new Ford parked in her blind spot. The red truck now had a dented in scrape that seemed to stretch out for miles and miles (But in actual reality it was only about three feet).

“F%$@ ME!”

Sara’s mouth hung open in despair because she was about to learn a very valuable life lesson. Not only was it important to check your blind spot, but it was also not a very good idea to try and eat popcorn off the floor of your car (no matter how clean it is) if you’re in the process of driving.