The essay "Sex, Lies, and Advertising," wasn't very interesting to me. It was very long and somewhat redundant. I had a very hard time reading it, I found myself putting my book down often to do something else. She had a good attention grabbing title, but wasn't able to keep my attention.

Why we Crave Horror Movies

Stephen King's essay "Why we Crave Horror Movies" was very interesting to me. He presented a very thought provoking topic. It was almost frightening, but I suppose that's what Stephen King does best! I really liked his use of anologies; comparing emotions to a body and how they need to be exercised. These analogies helped me to understand exactly what he was meaning and visualize it. I liked the end where he talked about it being a good thing to watch such horror movies...it allows you to get your demented fantasies out thus "keeping the gators fed." As disturbing as this essay may have been, he did a good job at keeping the reader interested...at least me anyway!

How to tame a wild tongue

Gloria talks about how her language is under-fire here in American culture, and sometimes even in spanish cultures. She notes that Chicanas are led to believe that they speak poor Spanish - and identifies this as Linguistic Terrorism. Have any of you ever felt that way about something so personal to you in regards to how you communicate? Maybe you have had a friend who uses sign language, and recognized that others thought he/she was inferior for not being able to speak proper english?

I had a German friend who tried to speak english, but was unable to formulate well articulated sentences. He was very capable of communicating how he felt, but did not sound all that smart - even though he was brilliant! I think many of my english aquiantences dissmissed some of his thoughts in conversation or would avoid talking to him about personal things because he did not speak well enough english. I think this might be closely related to Gloria's thoughts in reference to "Linguistic terrorism."

Malcom X's essay "Coming to an Awareness of Language," surprised me. I was not aware that he learned to write this way. He proves Maurius's point that reading is the best thing to do when you want to write. Maybe I should start doing more of this!

HI group,

Finally, we're getting the blog portion of the syllabus underway--sorry it's taken so long. I look forward to reading what you have to say about the essays you've read this far in the semester, so please begin a discussion of those essays here. I look forward to seeing you all in class soon.