Randomness #2

So it is another free response blog this week and I am not exactly sure what to write about. I guess I could tell everyone a little bit more about where all I have lived which some people seem to care about and then others don’t.  I was born in Texas in a city just outside of Dallas. I lived there til I was around 2 but I still consider myself a Texan. My gramma lives there so I visit her a lot and I absolutely love Texas.  The weather is amazing there all the time. Most people have this perception that it is super hot and humid all the time.  That’s not really true. While the temperature gets over 100 degrees quite frequently, I have never experienced an unbearably humid day. From Texas, I moved to Utah, outside of Salt Lake City. I was really young when I lived there so I don’t really remember it. However I do remember there being predominantly Mormon families (I have nothing against Mormons, just FYI) and so all our neighbors had absurd amounts of kids, like 15. They could’ve had their own TV show.  What was funny though is that I’m an only child, so all the other kids thought it was so weird that there was only one of me while everyone else had multiple brothers and sisters.  From there, I lived in 2 cities in North Carolina, outside of Charlotte and Greensboro.  I really loved North Carolina and I wish I could go back and live there again at some point in my life.  I've only been back once since I've moved though.  After North Carolina, I lived in Palos Park up by Chicago. Many of you are probably familiar with this area but no offense to you guys, I didn’t really like it. It was too crowded for me so I was glad when we moved. Now I live outside of St. Louis and it is probably my favorite place I have lived. The weather is super awesome and it’s just beautiful out there.  I always thought that the Midwest would be so boring but it’s actually filled with tons of trees and stuff of that nature.  I’m not really sure how to end these blogs so I'm going to show a picture of the new turtle iPod case I got!

Word Count: 392

Visual Text

For my visual text, I am going to write about a new movie I just got, A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas.  I have not actually viewed it yet but I loved the previous 2 movies so I'm sure that this will be just as excellent.  The front of the cover has the movie title across the top section of the cover with Harold and Kumar placed in the middle of the cover with Neil Patrick Harris next to them and 2 girls dressed as angels at the ends.  Without the movie title saying “Christmas” there's no way that you could imply it’s a movie that takes place around Christmastime.  The background is not very visible because the characters take up the majority of it but there is a faint sight of snow which implies winter but it is really hard to tell from just a quick glance at the cover.  The back of the cover is more obviously Christmas and winter time related.  It gives a quick summary of the movie, as all backside movie covers do, but the scene shots that are on the back show more of a Christmas themed movie.  There's a robot with a red apron on (a Christmas color) and it’s holding a tray with food on it and what appears to be holly (it’s a small-ish picture so I can't really tell).  Also the pictures along the bottom show Christmas trees and an evil snowman which are all Christmas and winter themed items. If you know anything about the Harold & Kumar movies, you know that they will have some stupid moments in them so to show that, there's a picture of them in their boxers, tied to a pole with some rope.  This picture implies the kind of shenanigans that they get themselves into.  Overall the front and back covers don’t really match up but they all have the different elements that are in the Harold & Kumar movies. I think it’s a good DVD cover and I can't wait to watch it.

Word Count: 341

Randomness

So for our third week of blogging, it is a free write so I’m going to talk about my favorite things. First off, as of right now at least, I am addicted to the game Tiny Tower. For those of you who don’t know what it is, it’s an app in which you continuously add new floors like residential, recreation, retail, food, creative and service.  Each floor costs a certain amount of coins and there’s like construction times for each new floor and whenever you restock items on the floors. Overall it is pretty fun and I’ve spent plenty of nights just lying in bed restocking floors and moving people up and down in elevators. Moral of the story is that if you don’t already have it, you should get it. Plus, it’s free. So that’s pretty awesome.

Another thing that I enjoy is working at my job back home.  It sounds lame that I actually like work because most people are like ahh I hate my job but not me.  I’ve been working at Papa Murphy’s (pizza store) for 2 years in March and I'm currently the shift supervisor.  It’s a pretty big responsibility because I have to boss around the new people and they don’t really know what to do or they challenge my authority. Basically my jobs as a pizza maker is to sauce and cheese the dough, then put toppings on and wrap it up. A cool thing about the store is that we don’t cook the pizza there; it’s take and bake so people have to bake it at their homes.  But it’s an easy job and since I've worked there for so long, I'm really close with all the employees and we hang out and stuff. I also became best friends with one of the girls there so that’s cool too. I don’t really have much of a life as you can tell, hahaha.

Word Count: 320

Commercials

For the commercial assignment we had, I watched Glee, which is on Fox.  I believe that Fox’s target audience is kids our age, because based on the commercials in which they promote their own shows, it seems like most of the shows appeal to teenagers and young adults.  Because of this targeted audience, the commercials generally revolved around upcoming movies, TV shows, car companies or social media. 

The majority of commercials that I saw were geared towards a younger crowd, with car commercials for the college grads who need to get a brand new vehicle, or someone who needs to upgrade their old phone.  Each commercial had a variety of colors and sounds (like music or a jingle) to catch the attention of the audience.  Fox also has shows that are directed towards an older audience (like American Idol or any of their drama shows), they also have commercials that parents would need, like Nyquil or Dayquil if they or their child is sick.  Most commercials however were directed towards the younger generation. Some commercials that really stood out to me where a Sprint commercial about unlimited data for the iPhone and Subway advertising their Febru-any $5 footlongs.

The Sprint commercial stuck out to me for a couple of reasons. One is because I’m on the Sprint network and the other is because I really want an iPhone.  Sprint knows that teenagers and young adults are caught up in technology and rely heavily on it and the majority of people would like to have an iPhone.  So they create a commercial that appeals to the technological aspect of life (iPhone) and simultaneously promote their company’s unlimited data deal (which is a really good deal).  Also the Subway commercial relies heavily on its catchy $5 footlong slogan.  Subway uses that slogan to their advantage because everyone knows it and, let’s face it, some of us sing along to it.  The familiarity with it makes people remember Subway and crave it.  Along with the $5 footlong slogan, they add the clever Febru-any to the commercial, they promote the current deal they have going on, which is super awesome because Subway is delicious.

Word Count: 360