Scream Park of the Year

Having only been to three different haunted houses (two of them designated 'Scream Parks'), I'm not horribly qualified to deem any one park 'Best of the Year', so I suppose it's going to have to be 'Scream Park of the Year According to Me Unless I Find a Better One Still Open After Halloween'. SPotYAtMUIFaBOSOAH or LOLWTF for short.

After working at the 'Carnival of Fear' over in the State Fair Park for the last month, me and most of my coworkers decided it might be fun to drive out to Omaha to see how well Scary Acres had set up and also to steal some of their ideas for next year.

The 'Scary Acres' park is split into four sections - 'The Stalks of Terror', 'The Dark Forest', 'The House on the Hill', and 'The Master's Castle'.

'Stalks of Terror', which actually turned out to be more of a 'Semi-Tall Grasses of Apathy' was unfortunately only frightening for the approximately five minutes that we were with the belief that people were hiding in the grass to jump out and chase us with chainsaws. Obviously, there was no such luck, and after almost walking back out to the parking lot through a path someone had forgotten to close, we all turned back and found the exit to the maze...three feet from the entrance.

Our next stop was 'The Dark Forest', which fortunately started living up to the reputation of Scream Park Attraction, though not horribly well. We were split into two groups and sent off down a completely devoid of light, semi-dry riverbed inset with the occasional Giant Rock Your Ass is Going to Trip On. After a few minutes of walking, we were confronted with what appeared to be a Ninja with a giant axe who ordered us to follow him through a cold, surprisingly even darker than before path through a large patch of dead trees, which partially wound through a deserted shed and into a small 'meat-packing plant' where the tell-tale smell of gas alerted us to the next Ninja with a giant chainsaw.

Starting to feel like the trip had been a waste of $25 and and two hours of our lives, we headed to the 'House on the Hill', which looked rather imposing on it's perch well above the rest of the attractions until viewed from the side, where onlookers realized the front of the house was a cardboard front maybe 2 inches thick (though extremely detailed, so we were willing to forgive them). Once we reached the entrance, we were given a completely new set of instructions from the last two attractions - stay in a single line, and make sure you were in good physical health before entering, due to long stretches of darkness, claustrophia-inducing areas and sudden scares.

Cool.

Once inside, several of us immediately dropped our jaws at the amount of detail that had been put into the interior - it was as if we had actually stepped into a long-abandoned house, complete with caving ceiling, broken and torn surfaces and a violently obstructed staircase. We were led into the next room by a ghastly-painted woman who opened an entire wall that not even the technician from our haunted house had been able to spot. As we snaked through the deceptively large house, we squeezed through foot-wide openings in complete darkness, crawled through realistic 'caves', interrupted an attempt at waking the dead in a gothic church room and nearly lost limbs to several overly-enthusiastic monsters with an array of knives, chainsaws, axes, and meatcleavers.

'The Master's Castle' was reputed to be the most terrifying of the attractions, though I'd be hard-pressed to say if it or 'House on the Hill' was better - thinking back, I really can't remember which rooms belonged to which house.

The best aspect of the Park was the live actors who occasionally wandered through the yard at the center of all four attractions that excelled at picking out the most squeemish and freaked-out visitors. At one point, a terrified girl around 16 years old was trapped on a bridge between an advancing chainsaw-weilder and a slow-moving My Chemical Romance Gone Wrong with a five-foot-long fire axe. With both less than three feet from either side of her, she finally streaked past the axe-weilder while screaming bloody murder and didn't stop until she'd reached the other side of the park, where she immediately crouched down behind a golf-cart and had to be retrieved by her cackling friends.

Definitely recommended for next year. :D

Gag Me With a Silk Stocking...

First off...

HA. I did the right assignment.

Anyway.


Growing up with a father who is a die-hard fan of anything having to do with the Victorian Era (including every Sherlock Holmes story, original and fan-based), it's not horribly surprising that I ended up loving the Sherlock Holmes stories, too. Unfortunately, liking them so much makes watching bad rip-offs of Sherlock Holmes stories especially painful.

I think the worst Sherlock Holmes-based movie I've ever watched was one in what I understand is a new series of Holmes shows produced by BBC.

'The Case of the Silk Stocking' is a good movie in itself, but as a movie based on the characters of 'Sherlock Holmes', it's horrible. Not only is it set in the wrong time period (which I suppose is slightly excusable - one of my favorite Holmes-based movies is also set in the wrong period), but it also shows Holmes doing every drug known to man every five minutes, he is increasingly egotistical and rude to every other character as the movie progresses, and he insults Dr. Watson, his 'best' and most trusted friend in the original stories, whenever the two are within shouting distance.

(Ironically, Watson is played by actor Ian Hart, who also played the part of 'Sherlock Holmes' creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle alongside Johnny Depp's portrayal of Sir James Matthew Barrie, creator of 'Peter Pan' in 'Finding Neverland'.)

In many cases, the breaking of a movie can be put down to lack-luster acting skills, but in this case, I think the character flaws are due more to fault on the part of the writers and possibly even the director, though I don't think directors necessrily have that much of an influence on how the characters are written. Watching Rupert Everett in both this movie as Sherlock Holmes and as the evil 'Doctor Claw' in 'Inspector Gadget', I'm even less willing to put blame on his acting skills for the awkward portayal of Holmes, as he appears to be very talented.

Hopefully he'll choose to take his acting skills elsewhere if offered a part as this awful version of Sherlock Holmes again.

Pathos and Joe Biden

Goal: Analyze Joe Biden's use of pathos during his answer to the first question.

Senator Joe Biden uses a large number of pathos after answering Gwen Ifill's actual question*, "what promises, given the events of the week - the bailout plan, all of this - what promises have you and your campaigns made to the American people that you're not going to be able to keep?".


Pathos used by Biden were mainly in relation to past budgets that he considered inadequate or profitable to the 'wrong' part of American society, including (in the first half of his answer), "$300 billion tax-cut ... for corporate America and the very wealthy", "another $4 billion tax-cut for Exxon-Mobile", "wasteful spending", and "$100 billion tax-dodge".


By using examples of failed budgets in the past and comparing them to budget plans proposed by John McCain and Sarah Palin, Biden causes the listening audience to subconciously connect spending failure with McCain, though McCain did not necessarily have anything to do with past budget failures. With the economy as shot as it is, most Americans are unsympathetic towards anyone they view as feeding their tax money to large, wealthy corporations while the rest of them are struggling to make ends meet just so they can afford to eat or stay in their homes. Using terms such as 'wasteful spending' after forging such a connection of failure and his political opponent in the audience's minds can also serve to anger the audience members and in all likelihood cause them to be much less receptive to opinions and proposals given by Palin or McCain.


In addition to those examples above, Biden also uses more hopeful phrases to instill a sense of compassion in his audience members to himself and Obama, such as "we cannot slow up on education ... because that's the engine that is going to give us the economic growth and competitiveness that we need, and we are not going to slow up on the whole idea of providing for affordable health care for Americans" when defending what promises he and Obama would definitely keep to the American people. While these may possibly also be considered facts by some, they serve to further endear the audience to Biden and Obama because they feel that both are going to put measures into effect to make both badly-needed ideas (better education and affordable health care) a reality.


I think Biden's most powerful use of pathos was "I call that unpatriotic. I call that unpatriotic." Not only does it serve to (hopefully) cause a sense of guilt in those who have been practicing taking their post-office box off shore to avoid taxes, but also instills a feeling of need for stopping this practice in the audience, which also makes them feel more confident that Biden and Obama agree with them that it needs to be stopped and would actually stop it.





*This is NOT a shot at Biden. I noticed that BOTH Biden and Palin did a nice job of giving a 3 second or non-existant answer to the asked question before going into their own speech about whatever they felt like talking about. :P

Response to Final Presidential Debate

Question: "Why is your [economic] plan better than his?"


OBAMA RESPONSE

Obama uses a mostly emotional appeal when answering this question, using phrases such as "CEOs ... enriching themselves", "shipping jobs overseas", "creating a job right here in America", "a give-away to banks", "waste tax-payer money", and "giving our wealth away".

Each of these phrases reflect the (often angry) views of many Americans as to the nasty state of the American economy. "Shipping jobs" affects those who have been laid off due to companies sending jobs overseas to India, China, etc. in order to pay less for their labor, and those left without jobs was to see more jobs kept "right here in America", where they're desperately needed with rising costs of living. "Give-away to banks", "waste tax-payer money" and "giving our wealth away" strongly affects those struggling to make ends meet in this roller-coaster economy while the government continues to overspend and borrow money that can't be repaid from other countries.

Obama uses three times more logos than McCain, who relied mainly on pathos, with maybe one actual fact. (I'm not making this up - I actually typed out everything they said so I could go back and highlight, and he only used one fact, which might even be counted as more of an opinion.)

"We are experiencing the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression" - obviously. Anyone can look back at the years since the Great Depression ended and validate this.

"We included, in the financial package, a proposal to get homeowners in a position where they can re-negotiate their mortgages" - we don't necessarily know that this is true, so this could possibly also be used as an example of pathos, since Obama is clearly targeting desperate homeowners in this instance.

"a give-away to banks if we're buying, for full price, mortgages that now are worth a lot less" - again, fairly obvious. With house values falling, paying for them based on their cost X number of years ago, instead of their worth now, would be a waste of money.

The only example of ethos used by Obama was a shot at Senator McCain - "the way Senator McCain has designed his plan" - which, in context, suggests that McCain has organized a terrifically flawed plan for an economic fix.




MCCAIN RESPONSE

McCain also relies heavily on pathos when giving his answer - more so than Obama, who only used six examples to McCain's eight.

"Our beloved Nancy Reagan is in the hospital tonight, so I thought some prayers were going with you" - while this is a lovely sentiment, it has nothing to do with the question asked and is clearly meant to put the audience into a more recieving mood based on his apparent 'sensitive' qualities.

"Americans are hurting right now, and they're angry" - a good way to attempt to connect with those hurt by the failing economy, and give an appearance of McCain relating to his audience.

"innocent victims of greed and excess on WallStreet, and as well as Washington DC" - again, playing on the emotions of those who feel they've recieved the short end of the stick as the economy's failed, while those in Washington DC have continued to overspend and continue to borrow more and more unrepayable money.

"housing crisis" - Intended to create a greater feeling of panic and urgency with the audience to find a fix for the economy -now-.

"Fanny and Freddy Mae that caused some prime lending situation that now caused the housing market in America to collapse" - blaming the government for the current economic situation endears him to the large number of Americans who also believe this to be the case.

"American Dream" - meant to instill hope in the audience that they could still possibly reach said 'Dream', even with things going as badly as they are now.

"Afford to pay the mortgage, stay in their home" - what every struggling household hopes/wants to do and fears they won't be able to.


The onyl example of logos I found in McCain's response was "reverse this continued decline in home-ownership and put a floor under it ... that value [of homes] will come up", which is obviously true - if you fix the economy, of -course- the value of homes will go up. However, he does not mention how he plans to do this, while Obama gave specific examples of how he intended to fix the economy.

McCain also made only one example of ethos, and this was a personal attack on a member of Congress. (?) Here, he attempts to pass off blame for the economy on one specific person.

"I am disappointed that Secretary Paulson and others have not made that their first priority".



I really do believe that both men are good people. I just think one's got it together better than the other.

Just throwing that out there.




(( ... Obama fo yo Mama. :) ))

Chapters 1 & 2 Questions

Chapter One:

1. Is it possible to create anything without incorporating some form of rhetoric? How?

2. Do you think verbal or visual rhetoric is more powerful? Why?

3. Which comic shown in the chapter do you think had the most powerful message? Why?

Chapter Two:

1. What examples of visual rhetoric does the Wesleyan website use? How did it influence you to come here, if at all?

2. Which strategy of argumentation do you think is typcially the most effective in ads? Why?

3. Do you think logos, pathos or ethos is/are(?) typically more effective when appealing to an audience? Why?