That's It, That's All - Final Media Meditation! So Long!

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I interact with a lot of different media every day, but rarely do I encounter them all in one day. That is why I divided this blog into sections my forms of media, not by time of the day.

Movies
Movies are great--they are better than TV, because there are no commercials, the plots are more developed, and getting lost in a movie is one of the most simple and relaxing ways to de-stress. “The most popular films always make the world seem clearer, more manageable and more understandable” (213). I’m not a hug fan of Action/Adventure, Sci-Fi, Horror Films or new war movies. I love to laugh, but stupid comedies like The Hangover really don’t entertain me. It’s safe to say that I like dramas, crime movies, historical movies, musicals (in good taste please, I’m not talking High School Musical here!), and of course, my all time favorite genre: THE WESTERN. Two of my favorite movies are: My Cousin Vinny (with Joe Pesci and Marisa Tomei) and Rio Bravo (starring John Wayne and Dean Martin).





Television
Two years or more ago I made the conscious decision not to watch T.V. and now it’s become a habit. However, that isn’t to say that I believe that what’s on T.V. is complete garbage. I’ve seen every episode of Seinfeld-- it’s gotta be the best show ever created and I like to watch some good ol’ VH1 countdowns every now and then; there is always good humor on those programs. AMC always has really great movies, a lot of westerns and probably most importantly, PBS is simply the best station on Television- if only for their frequent showing of the Lawrence Welk Show, the Ed Sullivan Show, and other variety programs of the like. By 2008, many critics were arguing that PBS had run it’s course” (164). Thats why more than half of all money PBS gets comes from donations to keep it alive. Does the phrase “Viewers like you” ring a bell??

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Newspapers
“Newspapers help readers make choices about everything from what kind of food to eat to what kind of leaders to elect” (249). But for me, my relationship with Newspapers is very small. I see them around a lot and I’ve used them to make collages. Usually reading a newspaper means two things to me: The Horoscopes and the Classifieds. I try to memorize everyones sign so I can read them aloud, and try to make meaning from such a meaningless section and I’ve been doing it since I was twelve. Sometimes people ask me to read them their daily sign and I gladly oblige. The other reason I open a newspaper is to read the “For Rents” in the back because I like to look at apartments; locations, prices, utilities included or excluded, furnished or unfurnished, garbage removal options, no smoking or smoking, pets allowed, etc all tremendously interest me.

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Books
I have a much better relationship with books than with newspapers. I love to curl up with a book on a cold night, with a blanket and hot chocolate. My library in my hometown is especially helpful with teens and I took advantage of their resources, my librarian always giving me recommendations. Usually, if I read a book I am really crazy about I buy it so I can reread it whenever I want. I really love to reread books. I’ve read the Harry Potter series more than fifteen times! I’m glad to have contributed to Harry Potters commercial success, as “the fastest selling book in history” (314).

Radio
There isn’t anything like taking a road trip and listening to nighttime radio in the summer. That’s usually when I listen to the radio. Its funny when you drive around the country and certain songs are popular and you can tell what region you are in based on the accent of the person talking. I went through The D.C. Maryland Virginia region once on a Sunday and in between about fifteen different sermon stations we found a station by accident talking about inferiority of Blacks as a group and the station had all sort of racist ties with the KKK, it was kind of interesting to think that things like that exist. I was surprised, because I knew a little about the FCC, (found on page 121) and a little about free speech, and I guess free speech protected the racist station.

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Magazines
I don’t subscribe to any magazines, but whenever I go anywhere with my boss, he takes a pit stop at places he knows with great magazine racks. Last week I was with him and his wife buying Thanksgiving groceries and we stopped at a Borders for over an hour reading the magazines. I usually read NYLON or VOGUE (“Rank: #16” [306] of publications), and sometimes pick up some women/biker/tattoo magazines to look at the pictures. Magazines are full of ads though, and they can either be really interesting or very annoying.

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Internet
I use the internet everyday, as I’m sure most college students do. If I made a pie chart of my internet use, 50% would be Facebooking, 10% would be researching for school, 215% would be checking important e-mails, and another 30% would be for Stumbling Upon. I spend an embarrassing amount of time online, sittings for hours sometimes doing nothing valuable at all. It’s hard to believe that I am one of sixty million users on Facebook and that although I’ve never spent money online, I still contribute to “Facebooks total market value at 15 billion” (53).

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Sound Recording
A lot of times you hear people say “Music is my life, I would die without it”. I am not one of those people that think they would die, but I realize that i would be very unhappy if I didn’t have my certain tunes for different situations. I don’t pay for music often, but I’m finding it increasingly more difficult to download music illegally. Recently, a website called Dirpy that I used weekly to extract audio files from music videos shut down, and now I don’t know where to get my music from.




So that is my final reflection. Media is in my life and here to stay in all of the various forms above. The textbook and class have helped me learn how to analyze how my brain absorbs and digests the world in Media.

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