Bible=Soap Opera??

Here i am, sitting in my bible lit class, and things back in the bible times were sooo weird. Concubines?! like prostitutes but it was totally ok... cool. There were affairs, murder, and lies/deceit all in here. The bible is seriously the coolest book EVER! There is every kind of story in here. King David's story is so crazzy. Its like Days of Our Lives, but with better acting i'm sure, first he is about to be killed by King Saul but God saves him. Then he is made king and God tells him that for the REST OF TIME, the ruler of the nation would come from HIM! whoa. And then he sleeps with Bathsheba, knocks her up, and then tries to cover it up! and THEN when he can't, he kills off Bathsheba's husband to make himself feel better. Seriously this could totally happen with EJ, Sammy, and Lucas! Actually, i think it might have. anyway, if you read the small stories in the bible, you can find some seriously intense things. DO IT! read the bible. its coo.

Homesick

I started college this fall. It is really exciting and i absolutely love it. but i am just starting to realize how far away i am from home. Oklahoma to Minnesota?! thats like a 13 hour drive. so i can't exactly go home whenever i want to, unlike allll of my other friends, except for Jordan :) so i am jealous of that. and i don't get to go home until Thanksgiving!!! 49 days until i am sleeping in my own bed. i think i will make a paperchain countdown. those are fantastic. but anyways, LACKAD called me the other night, that is, BLACKAD without me :) they were my closest friends in junior high and honestly, that phone call made me more homesick than phone calls with my family or with my closest friends, which is really strange. i guess im just sad that they are all friends still and i was the one to wander away... everyone still got together for allison's birthday. i wonder if i would have been invited if i were in MN? hmm profound thought... and then i talked to sean, my BFFEAEAEA last night! i miss him so much. gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!

in conclusion, i am really missing home right now and it doesn't help that i don't have too many friends here... :(

p.s. i don't think im blogging right. i will work on it :) blogging is usually about having something to say. maybe tomorrow i will post about nancy drew. i have a lot to say about nancy drew. The End.

The beginning...

Dear Friends,

Yes, i am going to blog. i just have so many epic things to say and i feel like i should share them with the worldddddd. >:) haha just kidding. i would like this to be a way for me to get things out there and write things down to figure out for myself. don't worry, i won't get deep or anything because that would just be EMBARRASSING! haHA. so i also decided that i'm not going to use correct punctuation or capitals. so if that bothers you GET OVER IT HOKAI?! and so concludes the first post of the NEW BadaBlog. thank you kind listeners. LOL

Blog #7

Once upon a time, 

I felt like I should make a rhyme.

Commercials I had to analyze,

They tell me so many lies.

One day I found something strange,

the way commercials are arranged.

In between scenes they are shown,

And the companies, they have grown.

Have you noticed the volume is higher?

They do this to catch all the buyers.

They have so many tricks up their sleeves,

And we need to be smart. Pretty please???

The End.

Something that I have noticed in TV commercials is the difference in volume between the program and the commercials after it. We have not mentioned it in class before but I think it is an important trick that TV stations use to once again, rope in the consumer. At first you won't be able to notice it, but once you know it is hard to forget this stunning fact. The volume of commercials are alwaysss louder than the program that you are watching. They do this so that you will hear the repetition, or the claims of the company. Perhaps someone has the TV on while in another room or busy with some other work. Then the commercials come on and BAM! There a brand name is blaring through the whole house. In addition to the propaganda devices and ad claims, this is another strategy that television uses to get more money for the stations. It is almost like they are sending you secret messages by drilling consumer information into your head. In order to be smart consumers, we need to be aware of this fact, and in order to save our hearing we should turn down the TV during those commercial breaks.

Blog #6

I think product placement is a great way of advertising, if done right. Personally, I would much rather watch a movie straight through with real products spotted everywhere than to watch one interrupted by so many commercials. I believe that this is a very effective form of advertising. I know that I have been effected by this many times, like when I see a pair of cute jeans with the brand mentioned, I consider going out to buy those jeans. However, the fact that a TV or movie star uses a product is not a complete selling point for me. I still have to be a smart consumer and take into consideration my budget and how much I really need a product. But as I mentioned before, product placement can only be effective if it is done right. Obnoxious placement can sometimes be a turnoff for me, such as the Snapple excerpt from 30 rock. If I can tell that they are trying to buy me something, I think that they are trying too hard, and as a result, I do not think about buying that product. My favorite example of product placement was on one of the last episodes of public TV's Passions. Passions was moving to DirecTV so I could no longer watch it without DirecTV. The reason this was so obnoxious was because I am sure that at least twenty times during an hour episode, DirecTV was mentioned and the characters went on and on and on about how wonderful it was. They even went as far as to put a word bubble from Baby Andora's head that said "DirecTV is my favorite!" This approach to product placement is unnecessary and completely ineffective. It must be subtle and small for me to be effected.

Blog #5

Recently, I have been noticing billboards more than I have before. One thing that is very evident and obvious is that billboards are much more simple than TV or print ads. This, of course, is because we need to get the jist of the ad in a few short seconds. I can stare at a print ad all day and analyze the crap out of it, but with a billboard, I only get a few seconds to spot everything that is going on before I zoom past it. I find that billboards are only effective if they are simple. That is, simple to look at and simple to understand. Usually, these ads give us direct orders or tell us a simple fact that will get us thinking. I have seen billboards that are too busy and have too much going on so I can't process it before I see another one. If only one propaganda device is used, that is okay. The direct order is probably the most effective. It tells us to do something, and since we are already in our car, it might be easy to do that. Such as "Visit us at..." or "Get your own..." A direct order can speak to the specific target market but make a vague claim about it. This vague claim or unfinished claim gets the specific audience thinking and pushes them to look more into the product or service. Overall, I think that billboards are used more as a reminder than a selling point. They remind us of a product or drill a brand name into our heads. The simpler the better.

Blog #4

I think that the media is the main reason that men and women have the wrong ideas about how they should act in the workplace or at school. The media portrays girls to be smart, but act dumb when they are around the guys. This builds up men to think that they are smarter or stronger because they are male. This is the reason why girls in reality choose to dumb themselves down for guys, just so they can get the attention from the opposite sex. This is also true in the workplace. Women aren't given a promotions when there is a guy up for it because everyone knows that they guy can do it better! Yeah, right. Although our culture today is trying to overcome gender stereotypes, the truth is that the media is trying to get us to revert back to our old ways, where women were inferior and they couldn't do jobs as well as men. That must be the reason why we don't see as many women who are bosses of large businesses, or high up in politics. To me, these stereotypes must be broken, not just so that men will view women equally, but so women can finally realize that brains are important.