Wrap up

So what did I learn from all this?
Is creativity this mysterious beast that dwells within me, or do I have the ability to tame it?
Can creativity be taught? Can it be learned?
Do I know now?
I've learned and grown so much this semester. I was lucky to have teachers with a passion for teaching. I would like to send my gratitude to Brian Fennig, my wellness teacher, because he prepared for his classes meticulously and it showed. Glen Griffin, for somehow balancing fun with rules in such a way as to allow us to work and play at the same time.
I've learned that creativity dwells inside all of us. It can be nurtured or stifled. It can be allowed to flourish, and it can be crushed completely.
Creativity is a productive force. You can't sit on your couch and be creative. You have to get up and make the creative thing happen. So don't be lazy. Get up and paint a picture instead of watching that tube. Write a song, a poem, a book.
You may be the most creative person ever born, but you'll never find out until you get up, grab that brush, dip it in paint, and smear it on some canvas.
Thank you all for a great semester.

Mr. Sushi

You see the size of that piece of sushi?
Unbelievable.
Yesterday I was invited by by friends at school to join them for some school is over sushi.
My new acquaintance Nick works at Mr. Sushi in Addison. I went there and took 2 friends with me.
We arrived late so the food was almost ready when we got there. Nick took the liberty of ordering for everyone.
We had 2 courses of delicious appetizers and there it came. Not one, but two giant boats filled with every kind of sushi on the menu.
The firs boat had a variety of different things but the second boat had the biggest rolls I have ever seen. Two of these were the length of the chopsticks. It was filled with crab, shrimp, yellowtail, albacore, salmon, ikura, and vegetables.
I have never in my life gotten full on sushi. It's been a day and I'm still full.
That’s how you host a party.
All of us agreed that we would visit this place again.

I got in

My only goal this semester was to make it into the creative school at SMU called Method. I posted a blog about the upcoming applications. I found out two days ago that I made it in so now I can actualy show you my application. IAs I said before, we were given a broad question and our task was to answer creatively.
Our question; Why Now?
I had several ideas and I wrote them all down and picked, what I thought, was the best, to turn in.
Getting into this school is a dream come true for me. How funny is fate?
When I got into SMU I was extatic because I would leave here with a grat degree no matter what. I didn't even know that inside the advertising school there would be such an awesome program. Made just for me.
I got to this point nearly blindfolded. Fate led me to it.
In this program I will be doing what I've been dreaming of doing since I remember.

Stormy Waters

As the nickname may imply I used to be a DJ. I Played ar many venues including Dallas Market Hall, Red Jacked, The Lizard Lounge, and Bronco Bowl.
Soon I grew tired of playing other peoples music. I started to feel like a Juke Box. So I decided to write my own.
This piece is called Stormy Waters and is a story about a fisherman heading into the angry sea to feed his family.
Most of my songs have a story but no words.
Please listen to this all the way otherwise you'd miss the climax and resolution.

Book Review

The World Is Flat
by Thomas Friedman

Since last semester I have been hearing about this book that is a must read for anyone studying advertising, and really, everyone else.
The book is about the flattening of the world. How outsourcing, insourcing, immigration, and education is allowing countries which used to be lower on the economic scale to start competing for our jobs here in America.
After the dot-com burst we were left with a powerful infrastructure that wires the entire world with fiber optic cable. Now, those 75,000 really smart kids that graduate from the 11 extremely hard to get into schools in India don't have to come over here. They can have my job from wherever they are.
Thomas Friedman discusses these 10 forces which flattened the world, and he continues with solid advice on how to make it through this shaky era.
The World Is Flat is a well written book and is easy to read and get into.

The Gateway Drug

OK. This is a tired old argument. We have all heard about the fact that marijuana is illegal even though cigarettes and alcohol is more likely to kill one. My argument for legalization is slightly different.
People know marijuana to be the gateway drug. In my opinion this is entirely true, but the reason it is the gateway drug is because it is illegal.
The only place you can have access to it is on the black market, where, guess what… You also have access to coke and heroin. If marijuana was legal it would cease to be the gateway drug, and vice-versa, if cigarettes were to become illegal they would be dubbed the new gateway drug.

The Task Force

The SMU task force finally held their vote and made some striking decisions.
A couple of points really rubbed me the wrong way.
First of all the bar. What happened. This was all over the media a few moths ago; being hailed as the solution to the drunk driving problem. Shut down!!!! Heh. Good idea guys now instead of kids being hassled bu SMU campus police, they can be hassled by drunk as rednecks on lower Greenville. Thumbs up!!
Second, there was a recommendation for teachers to assign more homework for kids. The recommended amount is 2 hours for every hour of class time. I'm taking 18 hours in the fall. That adds up to nearly 60 hours of work per week. WTF? I have a job.

You ain't artsier than me

I had never heard of this artist. I just came across it by accident. The video is really cutting edge, almost surreal. This The Grouch has an old school rap sound. He reminds me of A tribe called Quest, and Del.
I mainly like the video because of its rebellious anti-norm content. There are a lot of people out there who act like they're better than others. This song illustrates that better is a subjective term, that what he values is different from what others value but that doesn't make it less important, and it can bring just the same amount of value.

Reactable

Another great example of where innovation can take us, the Reactable is a lit table which can detect and interact with specially made cubes and emit sound.
I first saw this device online about 2 years ago. It looked so cool that I've shown this video to everyone I know.
Last week I attended an awards show and concert at Collin County Community College with my friend Randy. Lowe and behold, a Reactable!
Turns out a couple of students went to a Bjork concert where they saw her using one. The two decided that they would build their own and within one semester they had. They did all the programming themselves and figured the whole thing out. Amazing! This was as fun to play with as I had imagined.

Going to Moscow.

I just got awarded some scholarships to pay for my way to Russia in the summer and part of my tuition. I am so excited but worried at the same time.
I gotta figure out what I should take, read up on customs, and plan out this trip.
So many things are on my mind.


Am I going to be able to use my phone?
Are my papers in order?
Will I make friends?
Do I take a laptop, a camera?
Can I use my electric razor there?
Too much...
The trip is in a few months and I'm worried I may not have enough time.

Theory number three: Our expanding Universe

I took a Solar Systems class last semester. It was a fun class, but it had lots of holes in it. This was somewhat frustrating because I wasn't sure if these gaps were there because it would be too difficult to explain or if they were things we just hadn't figured out yet. As good as the class was, it simply didn't round off at the end.
One of these gaps tortured me so much that I had to ask my professor to explain it to me. The concepts he was talking about just wouldn't fit in my three dimensional brain.
Here's the problem.
According to my professor the universe is not expanding from one point outward, instead, every point in the universe is moving away from every other point at the same exact speed. Do you see the problem with this?
I do.
Let us say that we have 6 points drawn on a line(A B C D E F)
If A and C are moving away from B at the same speed, and D and F are moving away from E at the same rate, then C and D have to move toward each other.
But according to my professor C and D are indeed moving away from each other at the same speed.
Now you see why this doesn't fit in my brain?
I thought about this for weeks. I talked to my teaching assistant and my professor over and over again.
Then it came to me.
Imagine these same points drawn on a balloon. Now we inflate the balloon. Every point on there would indeed move away from every other point.
Since we took a 2 dimensional line and took it to the 3rd dimension, we would need to take the 3 dimensional Universe to the 4th.

Tough issue

Lately there has been a lot of talk about giving child molesters the death penalty. Don't get me wrong; I think a person who has taken a normal life away from a child deserves the same, but that's not the conflict I have. I know that most cases of child molestation happen within the family, I just don't think too many people would turn in a family member if it meant their death.
The ideal solution would balance punishment and humaneness.
I think these people deserve a severe punishment, but they shouldn't be killed. It would only make the problem worse.

The Question

For the last week I haven't been thinking too clearly. The time has come for the creative applications and an arduous task is ahead of me. Every year a hand full of students are chosen to be admitted to Method the creative advertising department at SMU.
The application is simple to; to answer a given question on a 17 by 11 piece of paper using any medium except for glitter, the herpes of the crafts world.
See Simple.
This year’s question is, "Why Now?"
Deep isn't it?
Well it's not quite as simple as you may think.
The challenge here is to show off your brain, so if you do something too obvious, you got a problem.

I got a couple of things brewing in there but I can't talk about it just yet.
April 29th is the deadline.
Wish me luck!

Acon calls T-Pain

I usually don't get suckered into these catchy internet videos, but this is hilarious.
I will admit that it crosses some lines and typecasts. The makers of this are notorious for blatantly criticizing the way the media portrays a variety of different croups. By really pushing the limit, they turn the mirror to the world.

The Robot

I don't know what went wrong here. I had my bristleot working and all of the sudden, after a long period of not being used, the motor went out.
So what is a bristlebot?
This is actually quite easy to make. It takes a toothbrush, a pager motor, and a battery.
Watch it go.
The one I made worked beautifully. I'm not sure how a motor can burn out, when it isn't being used.
Oh well.. I guess I have to tear open another cell phone...

Jacob Armen

I really don't believe that people are born with musical talent, but I do believe that through hard work one can make impossible things seem easy.

Jacob Armen is the drummer seen in the video performing in the 9th annual Armenian Music Awards.
If you haven't heard of him before you probably will.
This is Jacob Armen at 10


And what's even better?
Here he is at 7

What in the world is up with that?

Yesterday I was in my Russian language class when one of our students walked in late complaining that her foot hurt. She had new shoe which had cut her foot and she was bleeding on the floor. She asked if anyone has a band-aid and no one did. I volunteered to run and find her one; after all it shouldn't be that hard.

I asked at the library; no luck. I ran to the student center. At the information center I asked for one from several people the last one of which had band-aids.

His actual words were, "Yeah, I have 'em, but I can't give 'em to ya".

What? What in the world is up with that? Are you serious?

"Yup, we're supposed to refer you to the medical center", he said.

I remind you that this girl is bleeding on the floor out of her FOOT. What is the matter with band-aids that a school costing over $30,000 a year can't supply you with a band-aid. I had band-aid access in elementary school, junior high, and high school, but here at a university I would have to bleed all the way to the medical center.

Seriously. What kind of trouble do they think I'm gonna get into with a band aid?

If I had to organize my own concert...

If I were given a task to come up with a lineup consisting of bands, musicians, DJs, and live PA artists, dead or alive, together or separated, this is what I would put together.
I will limit myself to 4 headliners, 3 dead guys and 2 bands no longer together.




Headliners
Danny Tenaglia
Guns and Roses
Santana
Rage against the machine

Other acts
Armin Van Buren
Blakalicious
Del the Funky Homosapien
Mozzart
Bob Marley
Apex Twin
Lo fidelity all stars
Carl Cox
Nine Inch Nails
Tool
System of a Down
Jay Z
Binary Finary
Shpongled
Junior Vasquez
Tiesto
Rabbit in the moon
Dieselboy
Dara
Demarkus Lewis
DJ Turn@round
Allyah
Missy Eliot
DJ Shadow
Muppetfucker
Alice DJ
Craig David
Warren G
The Artful Dodger
An of course..
Gnarls Barkley

NAU

There are rumors on CNN and all over you tube that say that a secret agreement has been signed which will destroy the borders between Mexico, America, and Canada, thus creating the North American Union. There is talk about the new currency that we will all use called the Amero.
I wonder what would prompt a radical move such as this. My guess would be the strength and success of the Euro.
If this is true and it happens it could be setting the stage for a world war, but that's just my opinion. It could also lead to the eventual unification of the world.

If that happened, what do you suppose they might call the new world currency? The Blobo maybe? What do you suppose they might have on the world flag? A picture of the planet? Maybe different races holding hands? Different religious symbols? Works of art or monuments?
It's interesting to ponder.

Theory number two: on time

There are some psychics that can really tap into the future. Some Brazilian shamans talk to spirits that guide them and forecast phenomena like natural disasters with, and sometimes, without the use of mind altering substances. The bible claims that God is all knowing. He knows the past, the present, and the future.
How to explain all this?
In my mind time exists in a physical reality in a different dimension and is an infinite realm of possibilities that has not occurred, will not occur, and isn't occurring. It's just simply there. It's not necessarily arranged in a grid with squares, but it would make it easier to visualize. So imagine cubes of instances stretching infinitely along an x-axis (representing time passing) and a y-axis (representing different possibilities). As time goes on we simply move through this realm of possibility. At each instance moving forward in the y-axis while jumping through possibilities. It is arranged in a logical manner so that things that are impossible would not be close to each other.
So all things in the future, past, and present already exist. At times very special people tap into this and foresee the future or connect with the past.

Movie Review

Mermaid

By Anna Melikian

I attended this movie on the late Sunday night that it played. At first it was slightly strange like most independent films tend to be. The movie is set in a small Russian city. It follows a little girl named Alissa from her birth through her eighteenth birthday in Moscow. Alissa tells her story in an omniscient point of view. The film is in Russian but it’s subtitled and easy to follow.

We can definitely see stylistic differences between what classical Hollywood cinema tries to do and what we see in this movie. Armenian director and writer Anna Melikian has a uniquely perceptive eye. After watching this I realize just how much is missing from even the most realistic classical Hollywood cinema film. Her characters are curious. They stop to think and feel. They manage to bring humor into an otherwise serious plot. In everyday life people do goofy things that make others around them laugh. I was also laughing almost the whole time although this wasn’t a comedy.

The movie reminded me of a fairy tale in the way it was told. Once upon a time…

The underlying lesson; be careful what you wish for. At leas that’s what I took from it. There are many layers in this movie, it’s psychologically challenging.

Visually the film was clever. They put a lot of subliminal messages in various places in the movie. Had it not been for the subtitles I might not have realized that all the advertising posters that she passes by direct her with encouraging words and forshadowing.

I can’t tell too much here but I could say that the movie, although temporally progressive, breaks the typical Aristotelian curve that most Hollywood films tend to follow.

This movie recently claimed the top prise in the AFI international movie festival.

Invisible force

http://www.emigre.com/Editorial.php?sect=1&id=25

Jelly Helm makes many food points in his article. Advertising drives consumption and overadvertising drives overconsumption. Five of the richest countries in the world account for nearly 90% of the worlds consumption. Advertising is ranked 43 out of 45 proffessions based on ethics yet we have so much control and impact on the world and it's resources. Helm says enough! It's time for us to change the way we impact the world around us.
Deborah Morrison has written on the same issue as wel, but as it pertains to teaching.
Her article on social responsibility was intriguing. Where Helm is writing about change in the industry, Deborah encourages change from the start. When I was taking my AP art test in high school, I took a Macintosh computer and made it into a sculpture. I put antenae on top with a light bulb and painted a porn site on the screen. This offended my teacher beyond belief, but I was in school to learn these things. Had she allowed me to turn something like that in, I would be in a world of trouble now.

The point is that by teaching advertising students social responsibility is not only important, but critical for a revolution in the industry.

volunteering

The first student organization I joined at SMU is the Russian club. I am fascinated with the language and I love the culture. As a member of the club I hve helped promote SMU-in-Moscow, which is a five week study abroad program, and the Russian winter festival which happened last Saturday. I made flyers for both events, passed them out to students, and told many people about the events.

I took the day off of work to be at the festival. I arrived early and began setting up. People started arriving soon. Mostly members of the Dallas Russian community. Several SMU students showed up here and there and before I knew it, the event was sold out.

I only got to see some of the performances because I was busy making sure that the show ran smoothly. We featured two performers; an SMU student and the winner of the international Tchaikovski competition Andrey Ponochevny, and an angelic soloist marina Khankhaleva who sang in a divine mezzo-soprano.

The experience was fun. I did not get paid for this event but I worked it as if it was mine. My Russian teacher undoubtebly recognizes my efforts and I have gained a favorable status with her.

Through volunteering I have made a strong connection who will give me strong refferences if need be. As you may already know, in business and in life it isn't about what you know, but whom you know that makes all the difference.

Making your own path

This Wednesday I tried a unique activity called free running. This is an urban variant of the art known as parkour; made popular by the movie Jump London. This activity is very popular in Europe where groups of runners occasionally invade busy urban environments and fly through obstacles with apparent effortlessness. It’s quite exciting to watch.

Free runners practice religiously because of the extreme physical strength required for the activity. They usually start with stretching and soon move on to practicing jumps, leaps, wall hangs, and falling, which usually ends with a ground roll.

They use these skills to virtually eliminate all obstacles in their way learning how to use their body and surroundings to effortlessly, quickly, and beautifully glide through their environment.

The event I participated in was sponsored by K Swiss and their new free running shoe. They had set up an entire training course with walls to climb, rails to jump, and mats to practice rolling. I joined a little late because I had class, so I didn’t get a chance to warm up and stretch, consequently twisting my ankle on the first jump. It didn’t hurt to bad so I continued on. After we practiced the jumps and rolls we moved on to the wall hang where we would have to run, jump up and hang on from the top of a wall in order to climb over it. They taught us several basic techniques, which if practiced could turn me into a hardcore parkour dude.

I had a blast doing this although my ankle does hurt quite a bit now. Once I’m healed I am sure I’ll try this again. I like the ideology behind free running. The feeling of freedom you get from the total elimination of your environment is exhilarating. Knowing that no matter what stands in your way you can go over, under, or through it is truly liberating.

Theory number one: on stuff bigger than us

We as humans have always had this unexplainable desire to comprehend things bigger than us like the universe and beyond. This is a perspective that is unique to our species. We also seem to be interested in stuff much smaller than us such as molecules, atoms, and DNA. It seems that we know more about the latter.

As far as things much bigger than us, we have a lot of theories but not too many concretes. I think this is due to our brain’s limited capacity.

Anyway, I’m babbling.

I have a new theory that could help explain many laws that I would consider to be laws of physics but some may disagree. It may explain chance, probability, and cycles as they relate to planetary, galactic, and atomic systems.

So here it is.

We know that just about anything in the universe is constantly moving.

Electrons spin around the nucleus, the planet goes around the star, the star rotates around a black hole, and so on. This cyclic pattern, if graphed would create a sine wave.

Have you ever taken a pattern, maybe a grid on a transparency, and overlay this pattern with another? It creates an entirely different pattern, an optical illusion at the points where they intersect. Now if you take the top pattern and rotate it the underlying pattern will appear to change as different points are now intersecting. So now we’ve taken two simple patterns and created a third through synergy.

The same thing could be observed in music. When you overlay two sounds and if certain points match up, you get harmony. When they don’t match we call it discord.

Back to the cycles.

Those waves that I discussed earlier are everywhere and have an infinite range of scales. But they combine to create harmony in the cosmos. When these waves are matched up just right certain events may occur such as good days, bad days, natural disasters, new species are created, species are wiped out, you win the lottery, you lose your wallet, etc. Or even bigger cosmic changes that have nothing to do with mankind such as statistical probability and the law of large numbers.

In essence I’m saying that everything in the universe is made of music including ourselves, and the harmony/discord created in this complex system explains why I win one out of every eight poker games I play.

It’s a little far out, abstract, and ill-defined, but I really think we need a unified theory of the laws of chance and physics and this is my attempt at that.

A musical genious

You may have heard of Gnarls Barkley and his hit song Crazy, but you probably didn't realize that Cee Lo the lead singer has been putting out chart toping music for over a decade.

I like to call him the golden goose of music, because everything he touches turns to gold. He used to be a part of Goodie Mob, and carried a successful solo career for years before the Gnarls Barkley phenomenon.

Cee Lo's musical and poetic abilities are unrivaled. He packs so much irony and unconventional juxtaposition of words into every line that it sends the listener into deep philosophical thought.

In one of his songs he writes,

"Basically I'm complicated. I have a hard time taking the easy way. I wouldn't call it schizophrenia. But I'll be at least two people today... and that's ok"

Words are a powerful stimulant. I am in awe of Cee Lo's ability to arrange them so meaningfully. He is definitely on top of my list of favorite living artists in any genre.




Who cares?

Ballroom Dancing

I used to work at Arthur Murray dance studios as a teacher.
I came in looking for a position as a secretary and ended up being good enough to teach.
They trained me to dance, to teach, and to sell. At first I really liked the position I had, but as time whent on I became more and more defiant. It wasn't that I worked fourty hour weeks with no pay to show for it, it wasn't all the dancing or dealing with people(I loved that part), it was the people that I worked with, and the way they looked at our clients(Walking sacks of money).
We spent at leas an hour a day learning about ways to get people to say yes when they really want to say no.
These lessons cost $130/45minutes.
That's more expensive than SMU. Think about it. I had to sell these lessons by the dozen.
It took me all too long to realize that I was working for scam artists because... they're really good at it.
After nine months of living like this, I said, "I can't do this. This isn't me. I can dance anywhere", I broke the bigest rule they had(NO STUDENT TEACHER FRATRANIZATION), and left.
It was the one great thing that came out of this; meeting my girlfriend with whom I have been for five years.
I did enter several competitions while working there. I grabbed a third place prize for my cha-cha/hip hop routine.

DWI

I just finished paying for something stupid I did four years ago.

Here's the story.

I had just gotten a new job so I was celebrating with some friends at the pool. It was around 3-3:30 in the afternoon. We were drinking and having fun. Something possessed me to get in my car to get some food. I remember noticing that I was driving too fast, I pressed the breaks a little harder than I should have, and woke up in a hospital.

It has taken me 4 years to finish paying for all this.

Keep in mind that I got off lightly since my lawyer was my dad.

Upon pleading guilty I was given 24 hours of community service, $1000 fine, victim impact panel(painful), substance abuse evaluation, DWI class(20hrs), 15 months of probation(at $50 per month), and a $1000 surcharge from the state of Texas to be paid yearly for three years.



Wow. That is just a whole lot of money and time - all for one stupid mistake.



To all of you that may find yourself facing this decision, please remember. I got off lightly. You are better off walking, calling a friend; you're better off sleeping in the street than driving.

Not to mention that you can hit someone.

The tree I hit could have been a family of four and I thank God everyday it wasn't.

Measure of a man

I've been working really hard at turning myself into a good man. They say that a good measure of a man is whether he holds on to his core set of morals and values in the most pressing situations.
In this respect, I failed yesterday.
I am a waiter at Mac Shack. Every day we have people (Bussers, food-runners, bartenders) that help us out with everything, they get a better salary than us but we usually make more money with our tips. At the end of the day we compensate them by tipping out.
Yesterday, I had a very small situation get out of control and I let go of my beliefs.
Here's the story.
I had a customer leave me a nice tip but unfortunately he took the receipt that was signed and left me his copy. I can't claim that copy. I even asked my manager if I could. He rejected me, and at the end of the night I took it out on the people that helped me by not tipping out.
It hit me much later on in the day that my helpers had nothing to do with the problem. It began to eat away at me. I had problems driving and holding a conversation. I was ashamed of what I had done.
I went back to work as soon as I could and told a manager what had happened and begged him to let me tip out without anyone knowing. He agreed.
It was very embarrassing, and I hope that in the future I can uphold my integrity in pressing situations.

Trick shot

OK, this is just cool. I love watching trick shot pool. This shot is not only creative, it displays technical knowledge, accuracy, and most of all patience. The shot lasts for but a few seconds, but in it we automatically think about how long it took to set up, how long it took from conception to creating the entire sequence of moves, and finally how long that person has been playing pool to be at the level that he's at. All over and summed up in just a few seconds.

Ultimate to do list.

There's a whole bunch of stuff that I am yet to do. I may not get to do them all, but I'll wonder what it would feel like. This is a list to which I will keep adding as I think of more things.

Skydiving
Bungee Jumping
S.C.U.B.A. Diving
Own a motorcycle
Own a restaurant
Run from the cops
Run a record store
End world hunger
Go to the grand canyon
Make a huge impact on the world
Build my own helicopter
Move to San Diego
Work as a teacher
Win a dance competition
Win a beatbox competition
Climb mount Everest
Climb mount Ararat

Buy my own island
Make it into the Guiness book of world records
Produce my own cartoon

Satisfaction

The site we were working on is finished after six grueling hours which lasted till 4 am. We tied every loose end one at a time and attacked the problems ahead of us.
It was rough, but we had a lot of fun along the way.
I wouldn't trade this experience for anything. This is a perfect way for me to get used to the long hours I may have to put into my work in the future.
The best was the satisfaction we felt when we were done. We were yelling, high fiving and congratulating each other. It was exhilarating.


Check out the final project.
http://www.solve-the-problem.com/

Macintosh Ad

The 1984 ad for Macintosh is arguably the best commercial ever made. Created by TBWA\Chiat\Day, it played only once during the super bowl. So what makes it stand out so much?
This ad symbolizes breaking free of oppression. In the 1980s amidst the cold war, big brother was a word with an oppressive connotation to it. The term, “big brother is watching you”, was thrown around here and there. These were real issues back then just like the war in Iraq is today.
It delivers a powerful message. Something along the lines of, “IBM is big brother, and big brother is bad. Break away from big brother, buy a Macintosh!”
This is a perfect example of how advertisers use intertextuality to pack layers of meaning in a message, to evoke the viewer’s past experiences and customize the meaning to each distinct person. Intertextuality can be used in two ways.
Horizontally; this is when you link old and new cultural texts within a single genre combine to make meaning.
This commercial uses the other… You guessed it..
Vertical intertextuality!
There is a connection between this commercial for computers and cultural phenomena such as big brother, and the cold war the link is in a totally different genre.
There is a lot of tertiary text regarding this ad. It has won countless number one awards including the US TV guide’s top 50. So my perception of it may be a little distorted from hearing about it in many of my classes.

The best example of intertextuality(in this case horizontal) is the new commercial I saw on the internet that borrows everything from this very famous commercial to promote a politician.

Grinding through it.

I'm riding the train home. What a perfect time to blog! Except that i don't have a spll chker and no access to multimedia files.

I'm quite frustrated over the web site that I'm helping the creative team build. It's not that it is hard, rather the time constaints arent giving me a chance to research the tasks properly. I know from experience that if it's imaginable, it's doable. There just isn't a set formula for everything. You have to figure it out and apply past knowledge in new ways to solve problems. I joined this team 3 days ago, and our website is due tomorrow. I'ts crunch time now. I have ignored all my homework for the past 3 days, I haven't gotten much sleep either, but I refuse to turn in something that is incomplite. We'll probably be working well into tonight.

Weather or not we succeed, this experience is valuable to me. I will be dealing with plenty of deadlines such as this in the world of advertising.

My brain hurts.

Creative development

The Lab

The career fair got me thinking. I really need to begin working on a creative portfolio. Dr. Griffin got me in contact with the creative team to see if any of my past experiences would help them with a competition. I am in the creative studio right now waiting for Allie to come. I am both anxious and exited to be involved with this team. I really hope i can make a difference.

Career Fair

Although I wasn't complitely reary for it, it was time for the SMU career fair. I slapped a resume together on the fly. Put on a suit and headed out. Not knowing what to expect, I entered the career fair with caution and curiosity.
I didn't expect to get a job right there, I just wanted to see how a career fair works. In the process I gained a better prespective on where I stand, what I need to work on, my strengths and weakneses so to speak.
One thing I really need to work on is my portfolio. I realise that I need to get started on it asap.
The Richards Group was there. Boy I shure would like to work with them.

Prejudice

It makes no difference what color someones skin is. There are great African Americans and not so great. Likewise there are great Caucasians and not so great. I'm not suggesting everyone be colorblind, that idea is just absurd. But we all should know that skin color doesn't reflect the person inside.
I'm trying to wrap my head around the prejudice which, is still so prevalent in the US. The main thing that I don't get is the fact that nobody alive today bears scars of slavery. Most of the people in my generation are separated from that by several generations. So why do people still hold these grudges? Why is it that in America, these issues speak so much louder?
My theory is that America is a strange social experiment. It is one of the first countries where race has no ties with national pride.
Historically, people of different races were separated by borders. This made it easy to keep your friends and enemies straight. This also made it easy for us to hate a certain group. I believe that the tension in America is the remnants of this ideology which is ingrained in everyone.
As time goes on and provided that this experiment won't collapse, I believe we, as a society, can cleanse ourselves of this demon.


www.endracism.org

Business Idea

OK. So the idea is that I will design 3D models of future prototypes from sketches and drafts. Building a prototype can be a costly process for inventors, so why not. I have the design and 3D experience. Why not save them a step and possibly a lot of money by making it in the virtual world first.
I am in the beginning stages of planning myself, but I think this is a viable idea.

Cultural Differences

It never ceases to amaze me what people in Japan consider funny or entertaining. Not to say that what we here consider funny or entertaining is in any way less ridiculous. I just think it's interesting that they are that radically different.

Chech out these videos of a Japanese learn English tapes that incidentally also feature working out.





This one's terrible!!




I know that we're a world away. Could it be that the society oversears has developed and evolved so far beyond us that we can barely comprehend what they're about. Or are they the less evolved society. If humor evolves, and what we consider entertainment can change and take on a new shape, then are we soon to end up in their position? Enjoing this form of "entertainment" on American tv?

Linguistic similarities

I am fluent in 3 languages and can follow a conversation in 5. One thing I noticed recently is that the numbering systems have similar differences in most.
What do I mean?
In english there is something special in the numbers one and two. When you change them to first and second the root word changes. Whereas three and third are similar. Five and fifth are too. The same is true in Russian, Armenian, and to a degree in Japanese.

English
1234 One, two, three, four
1234th First, second, third, fourth

Russian
1234 Raz, dva, tri, chetire
1234th Perviy, Vtaroi, tretiy, chetvyortiy

Armenian
1234 Meg, yerku, yerek, chors
1234th Arachin, yegrort, yerort, chorot

Japanese
1234 Ichi, Ni, San, Shi
1234ppl Hitor, Futari, san nin, shi nin

It's kind of hard to decipher, but I wonder what this is attributed to?

Unique

It's hard for me to tell weather it is true or not, but do most people realize just how unique they are?
I've always known that I was one of a kind, so much so that as a kind, I thought the world was designed just for me. A bit self-centric of me, but always knew that I could do anything. The hardest thing was deciding on the thing that I wanted to succeed in. As a young adult I thought that I must be crazy.
OK. That was a slight exaggeration, but we live in a society that thinks, "If you're too different from the norm, something must be wrong with you. We have a trillion different reasons to put a kid on aderall. HORRIBLE!!!
I really don't think people realize hom much of a horrible trend we've accepted. I dream of a society which embraces the unique qualities inherent in people. The kind of crazy that I am is gonna make me millions one day.
So I encourage all of you to be open and free to show the world just how unique you are. If you're artistic, paint loud, if you're gay, be proud, if you're oppressed, break freee..
Live your life to the fullest!

Love Surge

The Wall

We have a terrific athletic center at school. It even features a rock climbing wall 3 stories high. I decided to give it a try today. I had never tried before.
After a brief stretch I was given a harness and set free(with a spotter).
I took about 5 minutes analyzing the structure and picked a relatively easy path to the top.
At first it was easy; I've always been a climber. As a kid I would climb trees as high as I could. Once I climbed when I was about 12-13 I climbed a tree in front of our high-rise apartment building and made it to the 8th floor.
But that was a long time ago. Today, once I made it to the half way mark, I started shaking and began doubting my abilities. Despite my internal dialogs, I pushed my way all the way to the top.
The second time was much easier. I had more confidence. It was a good workout though.
The wall looked terrifying at first but I was determined to try it and surprised when I reached the top.
This experience has taught me that no mater how big the challenge is, you just have to start, take it little by little, and be determined to reach your objective.

http://www.smu.edu/recsports/adventure/center.html

Super Bowl Ads

As I dive deeper into the world of creative design and advertising i am continually perplexed with practices I see and now, recognize. For example while watching the super bowl I noticed more ads take risks during the super bowl than any other time. I think that taking risks is crucial to making creative decisions, and when I get a job as an advertiser that's what I want to do. I want my ads to be more creative than any ads we saw this year during the super bowl. Does that mean that I'm gonna be out of a job the rest of the year?
Why do ad companies take more risks during the super bowl?
My theory is that the public is more conditioned to it during the game and not during the regular season.
What do you think?

I forgot about my test.

I could honestly say this is the first time it has happened to me. As I was walking up to my anthropology class, I heard someone say, "Good luck on your test!" to someone else. My heart dropped immediately. I had forgotten about the test and way under prepared. We had talked about test taking and stress in one of my classes and I had made every mistake from reading the syllabus to preparing way in advance. I was somewhat riddled with anxiety as I am sure many of us get but I thought back to my class and told myself to do the best I can and try not to beat myself up over it. I think I will get a poor grade. There isn't anything I can really do about that test. But one thing I can do is look at my syllabus daily and prepare for future tests.

A different look on the mindmap

Picture from boloji

Upon thinking about it for a day, I came to the realization that the mindmap isn't the only way for me to record my personality, it's simply the beginning of my soon to be well developed ability to be myself in many mediums and different forms.

The symphony

I had never been to the Dallas symphony before. The first time was a couple of weeks ago. The piece was Dmitry Shostakovich, Symphony no 10. It was a piece written in the years following WWII in the Soviet Union. I am not sure about the message of the piece, I found it to be rather depressing and terrifying, but I was amazed at how well the conductor, musicians and the room reflected feeling into the audience. I had never before seen the value of listening to live classical music. It's a whole different experience. The acoustics in the room allowed me to pinpoint where every sound was coming from. Even though there were many musicians playing at the same time, I could pinpoint a sound and direct my attention to that particular violinist.

MindMap

This was my recent project for my creativity class. To create a mindmap. At first I was a bit terrified about the task ahead of me. Well.. I didn't know how to start. We had to come up with a central topic that was one of a kind, and know enough about it to make it work in many dimensions. Once I decided on that, the rest became easier over time, until it seemed like i tranced out and the map created itself. Once I got used to it, i couldn't stop my pen.
Then I noticed something.
I consider myself a spontaneous and humorous person. Seems like I am often able to come up with a clever and well timed remark when the situation calls for it. But if you put me on the spot, i would probably fail miserably, which is why I am not a stand-up comic. Well - what I realized with the midmap is that this is the first way I have discovered of how to capture my spontaneity and record it on a piece of paper.
Quite an amazing tool. I'll be doing lots of these.

Challenging conventional thinking

I’ve always been fascinated by black holes, dark matter, quantum physics, and other general scientific unknowns. It’s not just about the unknown though. I love reading about the theories that we come up with, reinvent, and denounce in the process of discovery. Once the world was a floating disk on top of a bunch of tortoises, now, we can create maps of dark matter by calculating how and to what degree it refracts passing light. We’ve come a long way baby! It’s the process in between where we see so much creativity in the scientific community. Theories lead to experiments lead to results – conventions should follow.

Stress

I have a class called wellness. Today in class we addressed stress, the different factors that can lead to stress, and how to overcome it.
We filled out a questionnaire to find out how much stress we have in our lives. It contained about 40-50 questions ranging from the death of relatives to car problems. My score was 186.
Some of the other students went up to 500 and above, yet I feel like my stress levels are higher than this test could show(using the 40 or so questions). The most stress in my life comes from a source not listed on the form.
To put it mildly, I get the most stressed when i witness corruption in man. Weather it be one individual taking advantage of another or an organization participating in unethical business conduct. This happens all around us.
Car mechanics and doctors regularly take advantage of customers because the customer has no other choice. Companies like At&t, AOL andSprint often treat their own customers like dirt thinking, "We're too big for you to leave us". It makes me sick to hear about people taking more money than they earn. Some people would do just about anything for money, even pretend to have a strong moral fiber.
In my class, we also talked about ways of dealing with stress. I realize that there isn't much that i can do about other people taking advantage of me or anyone else, So I've decided to write a promise, a solemn vow for myself and my future to uphold all of the moral duties and ethical codes of conduct to the best of my knowledge and ability. I will not be swayed by greed. I will be open minded and open to suggestions. Above all... I WILL KEEP MY PROMISES.

The Haircut

Let's start by saying that I am 26 years old, way past the age of discovery and curiosity, yet, I am amazed with the world every day. I remember when I was younger, I thought I knew everything, yet I find that the more I learn, the more I realize about things I don't know anything about. So I try everyday to look at everything with the curiosity of a 5 year old.
I am currently enrolled in a class called "Intro to Creativity". Our task is to look, experience and analyze everyday phenomena which inspire us to be inventive and creative.
So what about this haircut?
Well, normally I have the same experience over and over again when I get my hair cut.
I walk into a salon, I may have to wait and look at some magazines (featuring people whom I will never look like no matter how I cut my hair), I am directed to a chair, the hairdresser puts a cover over my clothes (to reduce the itch), and she says, "What kind of haircut do you want?", I point at Brad Pitt, she gives me an awkward look, and she starts.
Not much creativity is required to get this done. Not much at all to keep the job.

Today, I had an entirely different experience. When I went looking for my regular hairdresser, I found that she no longer works there. A new girl, Summer took me right away. She was in her early/mid thirties, with glasses, and ling hair that was bleached at the tips. I felt that she was a little more contemporary and so I took a chance. When she asked me what kind of haircut I wanted, I said I don't know. To this she replied, "OK", with a smile. And we were off.
Within the conversation we had, she told me that she used to work in Austin, which she preferred to Plano. "Why", I asked. She said that in Austin she has several regulars who would just come in and say, "Just do what you do".
I found this profoundly inspiring.
Most of us think that a hairdresser should be creative, yet most of us have hairdressers who are dull and stuck in the routine.
Well, here's one! Here is one person who is creative all the time, and would rather not stop at work. Se said she loved her job, and why shouldn't she? She can be herself at work.
The haircut turned out fantastic.. Thank You Summer.