Thanksgiving Day/ Black Friday

On Thanksgiving Day, my family each picked something we were going to make, I cooked the turkey, my mother cooked the pork a certain way which in Spanish we call it "pernil" and my bother made the BBQ chicken. We celebrated Thanksgiving like a "normal" family would, we waited until the rest of my family came so that we can eat. In my family we are supposed to pray before we eat, which is something we completely ignore by now but I guess something told them we HAD to pray on that specific day. So you can say, we only pray on specific occasions... as my father did a prayer I looked around the table as we were all holding hands and I felt as if it was pointless to pray for the food we were about to eat. When we started to eat, we just talked about random things in life, from funny experiments we had to what we were going to do the next day. POINTLESS.
I know you're suppose be thankful for all the little things you have on Thanksgiving Day but as we talked about in class and I listened to Andy's interesting reason for why people really celebrate it, I thought to myself maybe celebrating Thanksgiving is pointless, its just another day of us being on Earth, we don't have school or work and we cook a feast and stuff our faces. I mean that really doesn't seem that interesting when you think of it. But I guess Thanksgiving is a just day to forget all the bad in the world and focus on all the good things that may come. Thanksgiving Day would be looked as a marginal message because no one really worries about how much food they eat and how they look, just as long as you are with your family, everything is okay... which is something I am okay with.

On Black Friday, I didn't even think of going to buy anything at all especially from watching that video in Andy's class, but I went. My brother convinced me to go at 5:00am but we ended up going at 6:30am. It was my first time going to shop on a Black Friday. It was horrible, having so many people shoving and pushing you, was the last thing I wanted to have done to me especially at 6:30 in the morning. Lets put it this way I wanted to smack each and every person that was rushing to get to some item that would still be there by the time they got there. I guess it was my fault in picking Macy's as my first store to go to. I ended getting a couple of jeans and shirts which I did not get at Macy's because of the situation there, I ended up shopping in Union Square.
I was really shocked to see how poeple acted on this day. I was very pissed off to hear that there was a guy who was trampled to death in a Walmart store which sounds really stupid. It was an accident that could've been avoided. I just think that day was pretty chaotic and people acted like animals. There's really nothing more to say but that people in the U.S can be very unintelligent.

Dominant Corporate Messages

The main goal of dominant corporate messages is to tell us how to live life meaningfully. They come up with the most persuading words and ideas to make us believe their words are true. I can agree with this becuase I am in this society and I live my life by watching others live theirs and learn from their mistakes so that I don't repeat them. But there are some messages that just screw our heads up, all they're trying to do is make us "perfect". For example, they say we're all beautiful but if we use their products, we'll be even more beautiful and maybe even perfect in their eyes. From using products and materials that we see from advertisements and the media, we are brainwashed that it will work on us.

In the Women's Health magazine, the front cover is bascially the introduction to what you have to start to do to get your life together to live a good and meaningful life. This is to all the women, "The No-Diet Solution!FLATTEN YOUR BELLY IN TWO WEEKS!" this message tells women that in order to live a good and meaningful life you need to be slim and in shape. The extraordinary thing about this message is how the media is telling women that they can lose weight in a matter of two weeks. They send these ridiculous messages to get you to think that this actually works and that is it mandatory to look good in order to be glamorous. (http://media.magazines.com/product/72/33/9061.jpg) In the front cover of this magazine, there is a attractive Caucasian woman who is slim and famous. The point of this is fro young women and older women to have a model figure that they can look at when they are buying all these expensive products and materials to look JUST like them.

Another example is Teen Magazines, which are a big thing in this society. They are mainly pointed at teens. For girls the messages is to look beautiful and young and stay slim. For guys, the message is to be strong and fit to look good and attractive for girls. In Seventeen Magazine, they teach you about fashion, hair, skin & make-up, health, sex, dating, and careers. The way they view a good and meaningful life is looking perfect.http://www.seventeen.com/ There is no part in this magazine that I have seen that they say you must go to college and be intelligent. Basically all messages are telling you how to look good on the outside but they never seem to have ideas on your future-wise such as education and careers.

Thoughts on Our New President Barrack Obama

I guess I can say I'm glad that someone with intelligence won the election and is now our president, but to be truthful I didn't exactly follow up on the whole election. Now I feel like I should have payed more attention to each candidates' speeches and follow up on the votes because I am still a little lost with everything that has happened since I never really payed mind to the things that were stated by each candidate. Right now I do think that Barrack Obama has a lot of pressure on him just because Americans have high expectations from him. I hope that everything he has stated in his victory speech will have actions sooner than we think because everyone is waiting for a change.
In class today, Alex and Sam moved me with their thoughts and ideas about how they felt with the election. I thought to myself of course who wouldn't expect more from a black president, but we as Americans need to step up and not sit on our asses and help out too. This isn't just up to him, we need to work together to make change and that is what I feel Obama means when he states, "this isn't about me, its about you"
We also cant expect change right now, we have to be patient and let things flow...

Comments

I would have to agree with your analysis because the youth today is so influenced with what they see, they don't realize that all the material stuff will go to waste one day or another. The style, teens have today always wear out and when something new comes out everyone is out to look that same way. While others are in fact trying to be different than those who want to be just like their favorite celebrity and so on.
I never really looked at the video the way you viewed it but i get an understanding now of what the meaning of the video and how the media brainwashes people to be someone they're not. -to Andy

i really enjoyed reading your analysis and i would have to agree with you. i don't understand how some rich little boys would talk about love is all you need but then again they have people doing everything for them while they sit on their asses...it just doesn't make sense. -to kyle

good job on the analysis. it really caught my attention how well you explained everything. It's crazy how people think money and clothes is everything but you gotta admit we're all doing it even if we don't realize it. - to sam rios