Blog 2: Fetch

Today I was playing fetch with my dogs, their favorite type of daily exercise and realized once again that physics was involved. When I threw the ball for my dogs, I was performing a projectile motion. Once the ball left my hand, it had a horizontal velocity, the x component, and a vertical velocity, the y component. As the ball left my hand the vertical velocity decreased until it reached the peak and then began increasing velocity until it hit the ground, or on a good day my dog caught it. But as the vertical velocity changed, the horizontal velocity stayed the same through out the whole throw because it was not accelerating in the horizontal direction. Now if I had the actual horizontal and vertical velocity, I could take those numbers and then find out the vector and the angle of my throw. But maybe today we just play and save the experiment for another day.

Final Project Ideas

Well for my final project I really want to do something with fashion. This past week when we read Tawni's current event I was really intrigued by it and the issues it held. For me, fashion is something that I love. It is a way in which I am able to express myself and let the world know a little about me before I start to speak. But fashion is not all about what you wear but also about how it is worn. Both my grandmother and my mom taught me that you must always hold your shoulders up and walk with confidence. This air that you present adds even more to your look. Now I am not sure which lens i want to focus this idea through maybe the discrimination against certain fashions, the limit of freedom, media's influence on fashion but I really want to get the idea that is a way to express yourself across.

For the product of this project I know for sure that I want to do something with poetry because I love it. It is the prefect way to express true feelings and allow the reader or listener to experience it rather than see it. Then I was thinking about adding in art(paint, photography, etc.) to add and emphasize the poetry. And lastly, since I am doing fashion, I thought it would be perfect if I could do all this on cloths. I could place the poetry and art in certain areas on the clothing and then choose particular types of clothing that add to idea.

Responce to Mr. Chinen

It was absolutely wonderful having Mr. Chinen come and talk to our class today. He is really an amazingly bright person who loves what he does and you can see that just from him talking. I really loved how he broke down how he accesses the pieces of music which he is critiquing. When we first started talking about Russian Roulette, I really did not know what to think of this song and how it really related to the Rhianna/ Chris Brown incident. I felt that I did not know the proper steps to take to reach the point of understanding. One thing that stuck out for me was the fact that you really need to take a good look at each angle of a certain phrase or word and relate it to the song or an incident. But while you are doing that you must consider metaphors that are created, in this case Russian Roulette to love, and the purpose of piece of text. Along with this text, we music look at the cover for we are able to decipher more clues from clothing, posture, and expression. I really did not realize how much the repairing of an public image has to do with the music that is put forth. In this incident, both Rhianna and Chris Brown speak out, Chris Brown apologizing and Rhianna showing her strength at this time of confusion. Another interesting issue that was brought up was that of female views in music. We saw this contradiction of degrading/ strengthening women in the music video of Miss Independent. Many artists now days are attempting to adjust to please both the powerful women yet still have the sexy feminine quality. Mr. Chinen really was a huge help by presenting an example of critically looking at music. I feel that now I will be able to take apart text better and create a better understanding for myself.

Art Piece

Mural of Reposo

It is always amazing that a painting as simple as this can speak to a person so much. When I first saw this painting, I felt a wave of pain flow through my body. The way that this woman is folded in completely to herself gives a sense of suffering. The red back ground also contributes to this feeling since red is the color of hate, blood, trouble but then also love. This woman is also stripped of ever piece of clothing which may symbolize that she has had everything taken from her, she has been beaten down into a state where she feels she must hide from the world.

This position she is in also gives off a feeling of weakness, which woman are portrayed as often. It looks as if everything around her is coming in on her and she is not able to fight anymore for she has nothing left(no clothing). We could even goes as far to say that many girls in the world feel this way maybe about body image and all they can do is hide from the world. We could also look at it as abuse and there is nothing but hate surrounding that person. This picture is so powerful and can be used and seen in so many different lights.

Little Red Ridding Hood

It has been years since I have read this story of Little Red Ridding Hood, and when I read it again, I saw it through a new set of eyes. It was not only this version which was more sexual but that I saw metaphors for things that I could not have understood as a child. I think that it is very interesting that this story is a children's story when a child is not really able to understand what is really being implied, and what the true meaning of the story is. I know that I would have never have thought of this fairy tale as a lesson of staying away from seemingly kind men.

Well I must say that I really enjoyed the second piece we read because it really dug deep into the reason for the tale of Little Red Ridding Hood. I love that stories/ fairy tales are used as tools to send messages to the public. It was really interesting that this tale was used to open the eyes of women to shady men who were very prominent at the time of the story's publishing. I love that many of the words or metaphors used in stories are connected to French sayings or meanings of words. But the part of the article that really caught my attention was when they said that in fairy tales, there is usually a point in which the main character is brought adulthood. They then said that in most tales, women do not experience this but are seen as a child even when they are middle aged. When reading this, I was shocked by the truth that it held. Fairy tales give the wrong message to young girls that they must depend on a man to save them when really they have all the tools to do so themselves. This really was displayed by the original stories, wives tales. Most fairy tales were at one point wives tale, meaning the women in the tales would be heroines. I think that as time has passed men have taken full control of society and in doing this demeaned women. Luckily, I think this control is slowly being taken away and shared between the sexes.

Fairy Tales

As a child, I really loved the fairy tales but now that I am older, I do not remember what the acutal story was. The one story I really remember was Cinderella. I have always beea fan of romace and was even one when I was young. The story of a lower class girl getting prince charming is what every little girl wants. The prince who saves poor Cinderella from her evil step family was really the picture of " the perfect man" when I was young. Even now people are making many different versions of this story becuase so many people dream about this type of relationship and its formation. But know that I look back on it, I see that there is no deep relationship, that is needed in a romanic relationship, between Cinderella and the Prince because everything was based off of looks.
Another part I loved was the clothes Cinderella wore. The were wonderful big beautiful pricess dresses at the end of the story, she even looked great in her working clothes. Oh and the glass slipper, I swear I looked for one everywhere after i read the story. Everything was just so magical, sparkly, and girly. I just loved it.
Lastly, I am a huge lover of all animals and in this story Cinderella's friends were animals. It was wonderful to see that instead of the media's typical dangerous animals, or the harming of creatures displayed, Cinderella was kind to them. In away it taught children to befriend all creatures and treat them as you friends.

Thoughts about LWFC

Like Water for Chocolate was a book that I looked forward to reading every night. I loved the way the Esquivel used cooking as tool in telling the story. We in away could taste the feelings of the characters through the reading the recipes. It was also, at times, great metaphors for the event at that moment. Esquivel was really a master of metaphors. The one that I loved the best was the matches. It is such a wonderful take on love that another human being can lights someone's matchbox or their heart. It was interesting that she used the metaphor to tie up the whole story in the end.

Most of the characters were very interesting and all different. Tita was a wonderful character becauase she grew so much through out the novel. She was a character that held at least one characteristic that each of the readers held which made it more interesting to read. I really loved the character of John Brown. He was really the most perfect man in Tita's life. She had been hurt so many times by Pedro, that you would have thought she would have moved on to John, a man who truely loved her. Gurtidis was also a wonderful character because she was just a strong woman who was a great example for Tita unlike, Rosaura. Rosaura and Mama Elena were the most unlikable character in that they mentally harmed Tita. Although they both had had bad luck in the love department, they used that as a reason to hurt others.

Lastly, I really did not enjoy the ending of the story. Like we said in class it was way too abrupt and as a read I did not feel that sense of satisfactory. What really bothered me was the fact that Tita and Pedro ended up together. It just make it seem that it is alright for a man to speak to a woman in the manner Pedro spoke to Tita and to treat a woman like Pedro did alright. For me their "love" was really just an attraction, you never really heard their longing to speak to one another. There was that feeling of an actual deep relationship with John and Tita, but she was not willing to do the work which it took to build that firey love between them.