Stickiness really did stick

So I was out to lunch the other day with my mom since I had off from school and she began to tell me a story about my neighbor's child. We have known these people for about thirteen years now and their youngest child is about five years old. My mother was over their house the other night and she told me about how the five year old went up to her and starting singing in french. When she told me this I was comepletely surprised considering that he is only five, but he is learning very basic french in his Kindergarten class. The point of my story is that he was only able to sing french because that is how they taught him to remember what they were learning. This is probably the most productive way of teaching because if you sat down a five year old and told him to follow along with a french lesson, 99% of the time the child will remember nothing from that lesson. It is only because that they were able to appeal to him and make him learn in a way that is fun and creative that he was able to remember french. I can vouch for this in two different subjects. I learned a math equation in 10th grade to the melody of "Pop goes the Weasel" and to this day I can still remember the equation perfectly. It was the quadratic equation. Also, when I was in 8th grade I remembered how to say all of the question words in spanish through a simple song to the melody of "Jingle Bells". Even when I used to do my spanish homework I would start to hum the tune and sing the song in my head just so I could remember the words. I still remember how to say them now and I haven't taken spanish class in two years. Isn't it amazing how people can sometimes remember the most random of facts just from learning them in the simplest of ways?

The library now creeps me out.....

So today around 2 o'clock I walked with one of my friends to the Axxin library so I could drop off a book to one of my other friends who i previously borrowed it from. My friend was sitting in the cafe part of the library and as I was walking through there I couldn't help but think about our stalking assignment that we had last week. That assignment has changed my whole outlook on the library and the people in there. I mean our class was just a simple group of college kids who were given an assignment and then quietly dispered into the library. Little did everyone else in the library know that they were being watched intently by this unsuspecting group of teenagers. This is exactly why I felt a little creeped out being in there today because you never do know when someone is watching you. I'd say that our class did a pretty good job at being discrete in what we did because no one was approached by their subject or taken away by public safety for stalking. Yet the more I thought about how good our class did, the more creeped out I felt. Who knows maybe Dr. Lay had another class in there at the time? There would be no way for me to point them out because our subjects for the project were completely unaware of who we were associated with (our class and professor) and more specifically who we were ourselves. This experience has definitely changed my outlook on the library, but it will not stop me from going there. If I see someone who is watching me intently I'd probably just move to another part of the library.

What is Stickiness?

This article I feel was excellent. It served its purpose through describing itself in a way. The ending of the article pulled all of these ideas together for me, in that it created a new hypothesis for my views on this reading. This is because once I read it, it had similar effects on me about Shelley Jackson's piece, but only the part where I understood it and nothing else. It seemed to me that once I finished reading this piece I realized what the writer was doing. They were using stickiness to describe stickiness. By this I mean that the article was an example of stickiness in itself. It was creative by using different examples of stickiness (the urban legends) and by appealing to people, I felt, by being extremely simple. It most of the characteristics which were listed towards the end of the article when they were broken down into six different parts. This article definitely did stick for me. It did so much that I was able to read it in two parts, meaning that I took a break, went to my job and came back a few hours later and remembered what they were talking about enough that I could pick up reading where I left off and post a blog about it, without having to go back and reread most of it.

It even appealed to me in the sense that I agreed with what it was saying for the most part. I think that stickiness is a simple, creative story which appeals highly to people's emotions and also just their sense in general. Meaning that they simply liked it for whatever reason (comedy, truth, etc.) I think that through those ways it is the only way which you will get the majority of the public audience to remember what it is you are making a case about. There might be some people who will remember it for their own personal reason, whether they hate it or have some personal passion for it, but in order to get it to stick with the majority of the public, your case has to be extremely memorable on all levels so that it will indeed appeal to most individuals.

I like to think of the commercials that we saw in class this semester as a prime example of stickiness. If our class was asked tomorrow if they remembered what happened in both the Asian Pantene commercial and the Hansel and Gretel AT&T commercial, my guess is that they would indeed remember it. This is not because we have watched them so much, as it is that they sticked to people. They stuck because they were creative and that is the most important part in all of this. Creativity is needed whether the case is good or bad. Hansel and Gretel stuck because it was creative and different and it was also a fairly decent commercial. The Pantene commercial on the other hand was, I felt, extremely bad, yet we all remember it because it was creative and different. If we think of mass media and how much simply plain bad material there is on television alone today, there are countless cases that are terrible yet still creative. Think of last season on American Idol, the bikini girl who went to the auditions and didn't make it very far at all. Yet at the end of the season people were still talking about her even though she was such a bad singer. Also, the song "LOL :)" (yes, lol smiley face is indeed the title) I personally like, but it is just such a stupid concept of a song, but it is after all creative and this is why it sticks with people, whether they like it or not. I asked some of my friends if they had heard the song and if they liked it or not and out of the four people that I asked, three of them said that they had heard it even though they didn't like it. They only remembered it because it was so creatively bad and because of this, so memorable.

This is simply how mass media works, sometimes the worse it is, the more memorable it is. Yet this is also another way for people to get their point across to people. If you think of it, it might seem more logical for ad campaigns to use more stupid tactics in their commercials simply because they stick to people more. Geico is the perfect example because their caveman ad campaign is easily the worst ad campaign out there now, yet people still remember Geico and continue to use their services all the time. Lets hope, for the sake of mass media and advertising, that ad campaigns don't get more like Geicos and that producers will stick to using good creative ideas in their ads.

Why we stalked.....

I feel that this whole assignment, in a way, was another method to get us to pay attention. I mean that is what stalkers do, they watch every move of their subject to such an extent that it becomes creepy. This is what we did in the library the other day, we sat down, viewed our subjects to great extents and took notes on them. This project was for us to be able to be aware of our surroundings and to be able to notice the things which we would otherwise not overlook.

To me this relates to the video clip from the movie "The Pink Panther" that we watched in class last week. The whole point of that clip, for us anyway, was to think about asking the right questions, whereas the point of this assignment was to notice the right things. Our whole focus in class for the past week or so has been about taking notice, asking the right questions, and being able to deduce meaning from them. All of this is exactly what we were required to do in the library yesterday. Our worksheets asked us to take notes on what our subject was doing, provide metaphors for those actions and then to describe our own take on them (deduce the meaning of it all). having just realized all this just now when I received the email about blog, I now have more of an understanding about what this assignment was truly meant for. It was to get us to open up our senses and to be attentive.

Stalking.....

Today our assignment for english was one which I never thought I would ever receive. We were instructed to meet in the lobby of the library and stalk people. As our class walked in my professor handed us a worksheet to fill out and then it was up to us to find people.

As I was walking through the library I walked right up to the center and sat down on the couches by the row of computers. I think the girl that I was stalking was kind of on to me and probably very creeped out. Her posture in a way gave me that impression. She was sitting there doing her paper, yet she kept aware of her surroundings, mainly me. I was totally not discrete about it either, when I sat on the couch she was the person who was sitting the closest to me at the row of computers. Also, I sat facing her directly to make it even more obvious. The part that I think could have possibly gave it away that I was stalking her was that when I got up to get my coffee I went back to the exact seat in front of her and sat facing her again and continued to take notes. She also kept glancing over her shoulder every two minutes while she was at the computer. I feel that I might have distracted this person greatly from her actual assignment for the sake of my own. Oops. I do feel kind of bad though because she might have had an important paper to do, but I wasn't sitting there for that long so it's alright.

In a way my subject kind of deserved to be stalked because when I was walking over to find a person, she kept glancing over towards me to see what I was doing. It was a general glance it was kind of a "what are you doing over here, I'm just going to watch what you do" kind of glance. It was a little creepy so I decided that it was time for her to be creeped out back and that she was going to be my subject for this assignment. In a way she brought it upon herself because she got my attention by glancing over to me about five times in thirty seconds.

My subject however was not very interesting, she was just another average ordinary student in the library. By this I mean that she looked and dressed like everyone else and also was sitting down typing and keeping to herself, not doing anything out of the ordinary what so ever. My subject was wearing sweatpants, a hoodie, uggs and I am pretty sure she had a blackberry with her too. This to me is what I mean by ordinary, not saying that everyone at Hofstra is like that because they aren't, but because at my high school this was almost how every girl looked day after day, all she was missing was a gigantic iced coffee. She also carried around a bag and a scarf too, along with about three different books that she was using to type her paper. Even after I had been sitting down there and taking notes based on the worksheet that we had, she continued to glance over towards me to see what I was doing. After all I did make it kind of obvious, but the assignment wasn't to be discrete. She certainly wasn't discrete in how she continued to glance at me, but I was not her only focus while I was sitting there. She kept looking at her books and then taking a pause, putting her hands on her head in both frustration and thought it seemed like. After that she'd type out about a sentence or two. I think the entire time I was there she only typed about maybe half a page in total. Other than that she did not have many interactions at all. She did not go on facebook or look down at her phone at all. The only things on her mind were me and the paper that she was typing not very diligently.

My overall take on this assignment was at first it felt extremely odd to be doing, but after a while I just thought of it as a school assignment that had to be done and ruled out in my mind how actually wrong it was, just for the 45 minutes that we had to do this for. It was definitely an interesting assignment though, one which I don't expect to get again.

Welcome back Billy Collins.....

After watching the video of Billy Collins read his poem, it changed my outlook on poetry for a short amount of time. I personally do not like poetry at all, but his poem did appeal to me greatly. This is only because it made a mockery of what love poems stood for and completely made a sham out of them. Honestly when we first watched the video of him for the first time in class together, it took me a few minutes to realize exactly what he was doing, but once I did realize it, I greatly enjoyed the poem. He was able to pick a part aspects of love poems and turn them into nonsense. He used all of the symbolism against itself in a way. By doing this he showed people love poems in a new light. Billy Collins was able to expose love poems for what they truly are, immense amounts of cheesy symbolism. I do feel that by reading the poem to people it had a greater impact on them. If I had sat down to read this poem I probably would have felt as though it was cheesy just like most love poems, but the way that he read it made it come through to me. It was the slightly sarcastic tone in his voice and also his very relaxed almost not caring attitude when reading it that showed people right out there that it's intent was indeed to make fun of love poems. Billy Collins' whole feel for the this poem was even conveyed through reading it. Even though it was his poem, he wanted the audience to laugh, that was how it seemed he measured his success for this poem. If the audience had been silent and emotional about how beautiful the symbolism was in the text, then it would have been a failure on the part of Billy Collins because he would have simply helped out every other poet who writes the junk that he was making fun of. He conveyed his attitude perfectly and had a strong sense of sarcasm in his voice which made it come across to the audience perfectly. By having Billy Collins, one of the greatest poets of our time, turn love poems into a sham, shows me that there is still some hope left in poetry and that we have not turned the english language into the terrible one that George Orwell feared it had become. Also, on a side note, he was not writing for the university at all in this poem, this was for himself and the public. Good job Billy Collins, you've made me not hate poetry as much an more.

Every dog has it's day.....

After reading the article "What The Dog Saw" I felt an extreme sense of relief that it was not another shelley Jackson article. This article was coherent and kept its focus. Granted at some points it did tail off, but only to talk about material which was related to the subject at hand. This article was about Cesar Millan, the dog whisperer. It focused on his connection with both dogs and humans as well. It began by telling us different stories of the various dogs which he has encountered and trained. He is able to do this by using his body language to keep the animals in check. His main focus is all about how he presents himself. There are also some professionals mentioned in this article who interpret his body language and how he acts with the animals. At one point it is even mentioned that he is dancing with them. I do not agree with this, I think that his body language is very strong but no where near dancing. He is not literally dancing with the animals, that's a little absurd. His relationship with the animals is all conveyed through his body, otherwise he has no way of communicating with them. Dogs do not speak english. It is all about how he positions himself in front of the animals and in his chair when he sits down, the way that he situates his body forward show that he is in charge and is not backing off. Even when he does sit back, he places his hands in front of him to still keep the same authority in himself. He is a master of body language and is able to convey it nearly perfectly with the dogs.

Cesar also uses three other components which he uses to train the dogs are exercise, discipline and affection. He is able to combine all of these so that the animals become well trained. He takes the dogs on hikes when they stay at his program, he keeps his authority, and he also shows compassion for them as well. When all of these are put together it is almost how we would raise a child. We must show authority and show them who is the boss, but it is also necessary to show them compassion and to be affectionate towards them, because without this we would be overly demanding and controlling and would therefore receive no affection back. This is all necessary to develop a healthy relationship.

Also mentioned in this article is Cesar's relationship with his wife. He does not see marriage as a two way street, he views it as his wife is there to tend to his every wish. His wife does not feel this way and wants him to go therapy where he discovers that he must all make connections with people as well as the dogs.

The last piece that this article leaves you with is when it talk about the 3 year old who is autistic and his care giver. The woman who works with him is also excellent in what she does. She uses music to try and control the child. But more importantly she mimics his own motions and then tries to establish connections with the child through the music being played. By this I mean that she moves the childs legs to the beat of the music in order to try and calm the child down. I personally do not understand how this helps the child that much. I see that she got the child to relax somewhat, but I do not understand how.

This article was overall very well written, but it did lose me at some points. I was partially confused about the part with the baby and his therapist when she begins to work with him. This article also seemed like a hypertext, since it was written online, but more so that it connected other stories as well, all referring back to the original idea about the connections and relationships with people and dogs and people and other people based on the ideas of authority and compassion.