Professor Ludeker,

I am writing to you because I seek your support in ascending to Empress of English 121.  An empress must be a great leader, and as you read in my first assignment, I have many developed leadership skills.  More specifically, I have learned these skills while working with young people of average college ages (18-25).  I am capable of relating to this demographic while maintaining my authority.  An empress must be well mannered.  I have been trained in formal eating habits and I can maintain composure even under the most dire of circumstances.  In fact, the more upset I become, the more calm and eloquent my speech.  An empress must be regal.  I understand my attire in class to this point may not reflect regality, but if you notice today I am wearing a large, genuine emerald ring which invokes royalty, and I could procure others easily.  In my home, I have many dresses and outfits of lush velvet or silk in bright colors which would lend themselves to the role well.  Finally, a matriarch must be ruthless, and I am quite ruthless.  Just ask my boyfriend.

I appreciate your consideration, however in becoming an empress I hope you understand I don’t need your vote.  I just took over.

Regards,

laserchicken

Read Full Post »

Glitter doesn’t belong on vampires.

Opposition Argument – Glitter should be on vampires because it makes them more interesting and would be scarier at night.

Audience – 10-35 year olds, especially those who read or watch the Twilight series.

What we know about the audience – they are gullible, but passionate about this series.  They will fight to the teeth because of their affinity for the characters and more importantly the actors in the Twilight series.

What’s important to arguing with them – the response to Twilight is particularly emotional response, so we should rebut in kind.  We also need to try to separate the attraction to actors from the content of the movie.

Their rebuttals – it doesn’t matter, it isn’t real.  We like the way glitter looks on vampires.

Why this audience – this audience has accepted the new paradigm of vampire, whereas older audiences already agree with our argument based on their own prior experiences in vampire-related entertainment.  We hope they will consider our argument and perhaps see that the existence of glitter on the vampires is unnecessary and doesn’t add anything to their capabilities.

Power to act – the audience has the choice of reading or not reading/viewing or not viewing materials that promote a sparkly vampire.  At worst, they can expand word-of-mouth disdain for the concept of a glitter on vampires.

Our rhetoric – Vampires are often considered devilish/demonic figures, and they can’t be taken seriously if they glitter.  It detracts from their more intimidating characteristics.  Glittering is demonstrated in Twilight when the vampires are in sunlight, but in traditional vampire movies or books, vampires are always weakened, injured, or killed by the sun.  The new age of glittering vampires flies in the face of centuries of vampire lore.

Read Full Post »

Your grandmother has WHAT?!?

I am currently taking a MW Elementary Spanish class, and we recently presented members of our families in front of the class.  Our class is an equal mix of people who took Spanish previously, or those that are choosing to learn it now for some reason – such as myself.  At first, I couldn’t comprehend why anyone who had already taken Spanish would take a beginning course in College when they have to pay for the opportunity to repeat content.  Then again, a girl in my class admitted to wanting an easy grade to maintain her Financial Aid.  Nonetheless, if pronunciation and speech is any measure of previous language education, upon watching countless presentations I realized EXACTLY why people are taking this class.

“Mi abuela tiene ochenta y dos anos.”  Ahh-nos. Not ahh-nn-yos.  One after the other would get up, stating that their family member had [insert number here] anos.  If you haven’t taken Spanish before, early in the class the teacher makes the distinction between anos (ahh-nos) vs. años (ahh-nn-yos).  The professor states that anos is the word for anus, while años is the word for years.

This was a simple mistake on the part of my classmates, but it caused me to struggle for almost two hours to stifle my laughter.  The more people that pronounced it incorrectly, the more difficult it became for me to maintain composure.  Grandmothers, mothers, fathers, cousins, sisters – they all apparently had dozens of anuses.  How awkward.

Read Full Post »