A Boy and His Dog

I know a young man who goes by the name of Kash, and he always tries to impress upon me his eccentric perspectives on food. We would eat in the Harcombe dining hall and he would inform me of his latest recipes, and we would judge the dining hall food as it was laid out for lunch. Looking back, this was the springtime of my life, yet there was an emptiness I could not fill in the pit of my stomach: a sehnsucht eating at me like the food I myself was eating.
One day, Kash was not his usual self. He appeared more solemn than I had ever seen him, and I inquired as to the nature of his disposition. He confided in me a recipe then and there that would shake the very foundation of my soul.
The Chong Dog.
The recipe itself does not do it justice, for only through the process of its handling and construction do the uninitiated fully come to the understanding of the terrible forces at work within the bun of the Chong Dog. First, the bun itself is prepared and laid flat. Then, one side of the bun is coated with a dollop's worth of peanut butter. The other side is then coated with an arbitrary amount of cream cheese.
It should be noted that amidst the description of this recipe to my colleagues, it is usually here where the doubts progress from their minds and into their faces. Peanut butter is a familiar food, one that is known to be multifaceted in its applications from breakfast until dinner. Cream cheese is another story entirely with its realm restricted to where the breakfast sun falls on the bagel's cleft plane. Despite the outrage that I know goes through their minds, those who hear of these things react as such and nothing more, as they have heard of stranger foods and they are not expressly ignorant.
However, the recipe is only half done. Should the cream cheese and peanut butter find themselves spread evenly on opposite sides of the bun, it is time to return closer to the realm of the hotdog. One and exactly one layer of pickles are laid across the cream cheese. Here is where despite my protests whatever audience I have for the Chong Dog's secrets begin to vocalize their disgust. Then, they are calmed by the recipe's sudden inclusion of the hot dog. To all the audience, the Chong Dog is finished and eternally beyond the taste buds and palette of the mundane.
However, the recipe has one more ingredient. Those reading this post may have already guessed that all of these ingredients so far can be found in the Clemson dining halls, Harcombe to be exact. To find the last ingredient may take some searching, but it is always there waiting for another supplicant to relish in its glory. The last ingredient is the sauce they call Sriracha. The quantity of Sriracha required is not exact. The Chong Dog only requires that your faith be strong.
To describe the taste of such a deity among dogs would be sacrilege, yet I feel I must impress upon you the feeling that sublimates in the minds of those who walk the path of the Chong. When each bite is taken, the flavors war and rear up across the shattered battlefield of the tongue. Then, miraculously, the warring ceases, the lion lays down with the lamb, and the Chong Dog brings peace.
That is the recipe.
That is the Chong Dog.

Zen And The Art of Interviewing

What was it like to listen and take notes at the same time? 

In order to take notes during the interview, I had to split my attention between listening to the interviewee, writing, and thinking both of what to write and any questions I could add to the conversation.

What could you learn from an interview and time of observation? 

The kind of information the interviewer can trust from the interview depends on the interviewee and their involvement with the topics and questions. For example, there would be more reliable information found in surveying students on their opinions on processes within their school than to interview a single student, but someone who can give some insider information on the topic like a teacher would be more relevant in an interview.

What could this kind of research add to your argument? 

First hand information is a wonderful source of up-to-the-minute relevant information the scope and audience of which is completely clear. Such information would add a lot of authority to your arguments and provide information that is not necessarily available through any other source.

If you’ve already done an interview, what have you learned from that experience?

I once interviewed a man from my church for elementary school. We were supposed to interview someone in our community who was a World War II veteran. The man I interviewed had served in the U.S. Army during the war. I had a few questions prepared, but I was concerned that I did not have enough prompts to keep the interview going. Fortunately, I learned that if someone is passionate enough about a topic, they don't really need prompting after a certain point in the conversation. I learned that conducting an interview is actually relatively easy: the interviewee is doing the hard part for you.

P211.T45: A Love Story

1. P211.T45 was devised by David Tillinghast.
2. Nicolas Cage hasn't read P211.T45.
3. You can't check out P211.T45 from the library.
4. P211.T45 is hidden in a riddle.
5. The text P211.T45 is printed inside a silo outside the Brooks Center.

"A Golden Age" by Scott Nelson on The Jump

http://jump.dwrl.utexas.edu/old/content/rmv2.2

I chose “A Golden Age”, honestly, because it was not depressing and it had catchy music.

The piece is a collection of interviews of people in different kinds of relationships in order to present a message about friendships. One rhetorical technique that is used to present this goal is by giving the audience portions of the interviews that compare to each other before moving to later in the interviews. This lets the audience form their own ideas about these relationships they’re seeing and also about relationships in general. Before there is any text or vocal audio, during the title screens and music, the different groups of people are shown acting candidly. This provokes an emotional reaction and also solidifies the candidness and ‘realness’ of the whole video. At the end of the video, two sentences are shown: “You meet people who forget, you forget people who you meet, but sometimes you meet those people who you can’t forget. Those are your friends.”. This solidifies the ideas that “A Golden Age” let form naturally earlier in the video.

Ethics and Pirates

It is important to make sure that, before putting anything out there on the internet where the world can see it, you make certain that it cannot be horribly misconstrued.  Due to the especial ingenuity of idiots, this is not really an achievable goal, but it is a good guideline. For instance, it would be a very bad idea to speak poorly about a group of people without sufficient reason given. "Sufficient reason" is subject to the reader, which, again, presents an un-achievable goal. The best a writer can do is to say his or her piece in an ethical and intelligent fashion and hope that it is received in an intelligent fashion.

A multi-modal project has additional complications depending on the medium. The author needs to worry, not just about the individual words, but also the images he or she presents and how those images and words interact.

My project's aim is to give a brief history of the piracy of digital media and its impact on the digital media industries. Luckily, though my project aims to defame a specific group of people, digital rights pirates have relatively little self-identity, so any offense should be deferred. This alleviates much pressure regarding the ethical content. Also, I have not encountered any images or videos of internet pirates that could be considered remotely offensive or controversial in themselves. Some of them may present controversial ideas, but that's just good reporting.

Unfortunately, piracy is currently a heated issue, and one fueled by misconceptions and emotions. This means that the majority of people I will be dealing with will have very polarized opinions on the subject. With my current understanding of the subject, internet pirates have "stolen" an unbelievable percentage of sales, so it might be that the views of my audience my not be polarized enough.

Either way, I am running into a problem with ethics regarding the burden of proof. There are so many sources across the internet that make claims that are supposedly substantiated, but their references make unsubstantiated claims and so forth.

Multimodal Project: Sending a Message

For the current project, I'm looking forward to sending a message to my audience about the history and implications of the piracy of media.

I think that those who pirate are dishonest or illusioned as to the full extent of piracy and how it effects the media industries. It was not long ago that I believed wholeheartedly that acts of piracy were actually increasing sales of videogames and music. It was not until I actually looked into it that I realized what the industry purported as a devastating and terrible pox was exactly that to the industry and therefore to the consumers.

I plan on looking into trends in piracy and the countermeasures brought to arms against them.

Collaboration with Aaron and Tip

While collaborating on an ENGL1030 project, Aaron, Tip and I answered a few questions together on our experience working together as a group.

Q: Considering your collaborative project, what are you discovering through your research?

A: It takes a lot of the burden off to research in a group. About researching on the topic in question, it’s a little scary how much trust we put into advertising slop that may or may not mean anything, like “organic”.

Q: Has narrowing your topic presented a challenge?

A: Yes it has because when you have a particular topic its hard to pick which is the most important factor to write about it. Another problem with narrowing in on a topic is that you always have to be careful not to go too narrow or stay too wide. Trying to write on “The state of the produce industry” is as difficult as trying to find sources for “The repercussions of eating Monsanto corn”. If we were doing our research first-hand, it’d be way easier to have a really narrow topic.

Q: What is it like to coauthor an assignment?

A: Coauthoring as of right seems like a fun assignment because while we are writing we will have different opinions on certain things so while writing we can each present our sides to create a better argument. It requires communication but is ultimately rewarding. We think a trick to it is not to all be working on the same thing at the same time.

Q: What are some issues/opportunities, and how are you and your partner dealing with those things?

A: Some issues that have come up thus far is just choosing a topic that everybody in the group will want to write about, communication and coordination. It is difficult to get everyone together outside of the classroom setting, and it becomes rare for two people to be online and available simultaneously, which makes it difficult to get a consensus and to bounce ideas off of each-other effectively.