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Words hurt

Words can really hurt or can mean nothing. It is all about who said it, when did they say it, and how they said it. Two different people can say the same exact thing to you. One of these could hurt you and one can mean nothing. Last night I was told that I am strong because someone can insult me to my face and I would not care. I personally do not think I am strong because the people I care about can say something very simple and it will hurt me more than anything.

This made me think. When do words affect me? As a child being bullied did not work on me because I simply did not care what others thought of me. Now that I have close bonds with people they can say something very little or nothing at all and it can mess up my whole day. For example, I have an ex and in a few weeks I will be returning home and it is likely that we will see each other again. I wanted to see how things will be between us since we haven’t really talked for almost a year. I texted him with a simple greeting and he said nothing back which hurt so bad. If anybody else ignored a text from me it will mean nothing, but due to the kairos it meant everything.

To make matters worse I have a problem talking to him. Not because I am nervous or afraid of how he will respond, but I can never find the right words. I talk a lot and I am great at expressing my feelings, but when it comes to him I do not know how to feel. A great deal of painful things was said between us and the silence we currently have is ten times worse, but if we were to talk on a friendly level I would not know what to say anyway.

Happy birthday

                        Happy Birthday

            As you probably know today is my 19^th birthday. So you can imagine since you have a facebook that I received a great deal of birthday related posts on my timeline. With all of these posts I wondered which ones I should comment on, which ones should I like, and which ones should I ignore. The answer was pretty simple after looking through them and yes I actually read all of them even though it was more than a 100 the timeline makes it really easy to see the posts.

 The ones I commented on were the ones that were actually amusing and that I can see the person who posts it actually value our friendship and took the time to come up with a post that I actually wanted to read. I simply liked the ones where a person called me a nickname or added something to the message that made it mean something. I ignored the generic ones where all they wrote was “happy birthday” because it made me feel as though they just happened to look on the side of their screen and then post out of obligation. I know this happens because people who have not talked to me since I graduated high school left their generic posts.

It made me wonder why people do this. It does not make me feel loved to see that so many posted on my timeline meaningless words that have been repeated for the last 40 people it is just annoying. If you are going to take up space on my newsfeed make it worthwhile or do not post anything at all. It is only 7 and the words happy birthday have already lost all meaning to me and if anybody else posts it on my timeline I will be upset. The worse thing is when a close friend posts something generic and it makes e wish they did not post anything at all if that is all they have to say to me. The next time you see it is someone’s birthday on facebook please come up with something more clever than “happy birthday”.

Like to save a child

                                                Press Like to Save a Child

                So I was sitting on facebook trying to decide what my topic would be for this week. Which was not easy every idea that came to mind was either ridiculous or I already did it. In frustration I partly said I am not going to write a blog this week when I saw this on facebook.

This picture is saddening and you are faced with the desire to help this child, but instead of giving you a way to directly help the child it just says share and we will help her. That bothers me when I see a heart moving image I want to be able to go out and do something, anything to change whatever the problem is. That is the purpose of rhetoric to call the people to action, but these and other photos like it ask for pretty much inaction. People hop on the bandwagon of these photos sharing it or liking it, but I find it stupid are we really helping this girl or are we clogging our newsfeed with tragedy.

            I would feel much better if the picture told me to directly donate a dollar or to do something that lets me know that what I am doing is actually going to help this girl. I remember seeing other pictures like this one with captions saying “One like is One Prayer” and I am thinking could I just pray for her and is there someone sitting in a room staring at facebook and says wow 17389380 likes let me pray that many times. It really does not make sense and a worse one is where the caption was “Like to Save her life” and I would think is there a doctor sitting outside of the emergency room waiting to receive over 10thousand likes so that he can save the child. It sounds crazy when you actually think about it; it is like all the right forms of rhetoric is used, but they do not ask for a logical form of action.

Langauge

                                                            Language

            I have been studying Italian these past two semesters and it raised two very important questions. Why is it easier to grasp Italian than it is for me to correctly speak or write my native language of English? How many limitations does the English language put on who we think, feel, and act? The answers to these questions are not simple, but the more I study Italian the better answer I obtain.

            It is easier for me to learn Italian than for me to understand English for two very simple reasons. The first is I never got taught the correct grammatical layouts and as you notice from my horrible writing skills grammar is not innate as some assume. On the other hand I was able to get an in depth study of Italian grammar and learn exactly how to formulate complex sentences. The second reason is just that English is an unnecessarily complicated language that does not seem to follow a set pattern as opposed to other languages. For instance if someone gave me two words one in English and one in Italian and one in English and told me to pronounce it and give you the number of syllables in it. The only one that will be correct is the pronunciation of the Italian word since letters in Italian always make the same sounds I just have to put the different sounds together while in English the sounds of letters change and I would have no idea how to pronounce it. I can easily tell you how many syllables is in any given Italian word since the number of syllables is simply the number of vowels while in English there seems to be no way of knowing.

            In English I know a lot of words and Italian I know few words, but I am able to better describe things in Italian than in English. For example take the English word love that can be used to describe the feelings you have for activities, your family, or your significant other, but do we feel the same about all three? No, but there is no other way to describe our feelings because there is no other words. In Italian there is three different was to express love for all of these things which helps us better express the way we feel. In English I lack the language used to adequately describe my feelings and if there is not the right words then how do we know how we really feel?

Penn state memes

                                                                                Penn State Memes

                As you scroll down your homepage on facebook you probably see two or three facebook memes and everyone likes, shares, or comments on them. Sometimes people even do all three. As I sat in bed and wondered what I would write about this week I happened to notice one and it made me think of why I found it so interesting. Is it the fact that it reminds me of something? Is the picture of something interesting? Is it that I logged on to facebook with the hope of being entertained? After thinking about it for a little bit I realized that it is all three. Memes have been taking over facebook and is almost a daily source of entertainment for me. Today I would look at the latest meme and discuss why it is particularly amusing.

 

                As I currently sit in a hot dorm room with only a fan and an open window to keep me cool I can’t help, but laugh. The meme is not witty or did it tell me something I did not already realize. It just simplicity stated what was already on my mind. It is simply to the point and relies solely on the fact that the audience is feeling the same way. He used a dark blue background which drew attention to the bright white words. He allowed us to see the anger and frustration that we are already feeling. He used the most basic form of rhetoric by playing on his audience pathos and the kairotic moment. If he created this meme in January it would have been ignored because it is already cold, but since he created it in the middle of a hot season we are all pissed by the heat in our rooms. The kairotic moment is the fact that we are already ready to laugh at any meme we see because we expect them to entertain us as they have been doing for the last few months.