Acting Out culture post 4

Prompt: We have been reading and discussing issues of audience. Audience is crucial when deciding how to write on any given topic. This being said, let's pretend that Georgia College and State University has found a large sum of extra money in the school budget and Dr. Leland (President of GCSU) has asked students to submit letters of recommendation for a popular musician (or musical group)** to perform on the GCSU campus next Spring. I would like you to write a persuasive letter in which you are trying to convince her that your choice is the best choice for GCSU. Keep in mind your audience(Dr. Leland & other administrators). What type of information and evidence will they find most compelling? How can you clearly state why your choice is the best and how it will be a positive experience for GCSU students? What might they value? **You may substitute muscicians for political figures, actresses/actors, writers, artists, etc.


Dear Dr. Leland,

I would first off like to thank you for designating this extra money to go towards an activity for students to enjoy. We really appreciate this. With that said, I would like to recommend our act be country musician Luke Bryan. Bryan is orginally from Georgia himself and is a young act that many other students would enjoy. His music is fun, upbeat, clean, and very relative to our lives as college students. He has songs about sororities, fraternaties, being in and falling out of love, life, and of course, growing up in the country where he learned lessons that have changed his life. Bryan is a positive role model and has performed for charities such as the Kicks 99 Million Pennies for Kids Guitar Pull in Augusta, GA. All-in-all, I think that Luke Bryan would be an excellent choice for the artist that will play for Georgia College & State Universitys students and that many, if not most, of the students would enjoy his show.

Thank you,
Samantha Pruitte

Acting Out Culture Post 3

Prompt: Please take a look at the questions at the end of the essay "Two Cheers for Materialism" (AOC, 38) by Twitchell. Please respond to Question 5.



Q: In defending consumerism, in his larger work, Lead Us Into Temptation, Twitchell makes the following claim "We live through things. We create ourselves through things. And we change ourselves by changing our things." Describe an experience from your life that you think reflects, atleast to some degree, the arguement Twitchell advances here. What example from your life can you find in which a thing you owned fulfilled this promise? As you look back on this example now, does it seem to warrant the conclusion Twitchell draws? How or how not?

I think that the claim is very true. I shoot archery on a world competition level and as I have grown older and become better at the sport, I have gained better equipment and therefore I have become a better archer because the things I have are more accurate than what I had when I was younger. I think that Twitchells claim is supported by my example because had I never gotten new and better equipment then I would have never been able to compete on a world level and never had made a name for myself in the archery world.

Acting out culture post 2

Prompt: You, in all your magnificent power, have the ability to banish (to Pluto for instance) one person from the earth. Free write on who you would you banish and why. Dead or alive. (and use your imagination...don't go for the easy answers--ex: Hitler)

If I could banish one person from this earth (or send them to Pluto), it would be the founder of PETA. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is an extremist group that does not understand what could and would happen if they managed to suceed with their excessive ideas.

I personally enjoy eating meat. There is a great amount of protein in it and it tastes great. PETA wants to take away all of the meat factories and wants every one to go vegetarian. Maybe it is because I live in Georgia and I have seen the damage that an excess of animals such as deer have done to farms and to cars, but I do not think that it would be beneficial for everyone to become a vegetarian and to stop hunting. PETA is also against the euthanizing of animals. I think that if anything, this is unfair to some animals such as domestic ones who are chronically sick or strays who will not be able to find a good home. Declawing cats is something that they stand against but I find that unfair to the cats that live outside and use their claws to defend themselves and to catch their prey. PETA also doesn't believe in caging birds or chaining up dogs. I think it is for the protection of the animals that these things are done. The birds could easily fly up into the fans or a dog could run in the road and get hit by car: both scenarios could kill or disable the animals. I think they should be able to get out at times but not on a permanent status.

Zoos are also another thing that PETA works against even though many zoos are the reason that some species are still alive and surviving. Take the panda for instance, if it were not for the zoos that captured them at a young age and took them in, they more than likely would have died out. PETA says that they are against predator-reinduction programs but if the animals are never reintroduced into the wild, where will they go? The zoos? Oh yea, but PETA wants to close those down. There would be no such thing as help for these animals and they would only be hurt.

Don't get me wrong, PETA has some good intentions and I agree with some of the things they are against such as awful conditions in factories and genetic modifications. That is not fair to the animals and I would be okay with paying a little more money at the grocery store to know that the animals were well taken care of but I do not have the same philosphies as PETA. The organization acts so excessively and has such extreme beliefs that most of the policies and practices it would enforce would be more harmful then helpful.

Acting out culture post 1 [normal]

Prompt:Take a moment to reflect on the experiences of your own life. What are the particular ideas/values/attitudes that invite us to accept certain aspects of society as normal? You can pull examples from various media outlets, literature, clubs/organizations, etc. The main focus should be on thinking about how we are approached and persuaded to buy into an idea of normal.

I think that normal is a term that helps describe the conditions that we are brought up to believe. We are taught from an early age how we are supposed to act in various conditions and situations. I was brought up under the value that I am not supposed to smoke cigarettes or do drugs because they are harmful for you and can be illegal and that is normal for me. For others though, they were raised in a situtation where they saw these things on a daily basis and therefore, is something that is normal for them. On the subject of drugs and cigarettes, we are constantly surrounded by media that is condoning or refuting their usage. It is very normal to see an anti-drug or anti-smoking commercial but then again, we often see advertisements for cigarettes and legalizing marijuana on the internet. Those advertisements have had an affect on society and what is normal because they change people's standards and the accepted actions.