Based on the conclusions we drew in class, I've made a prediction as to which of the new shaggy dog stories would be most popular and which would be least popular. From funniest to unfunniest:
1.) The String Story
The punchlines are the most important part of a joke. In the string story, its punchline was "I'm a frayed knot", a pun that should be easy to understand for most folks. Most people should be familiar with the common phrase, "Afraid not." Although it isn't really an idiom or anything like that, it's commonly used in daily language. An important aspect of a widely successful joke is that the punchline is something that is often reoccurring in daily life.
Furthermore, the absurdity that a string could be humanized to the point of presumably having a job (he's characterized as hard-working), is capable of talking, of being fatigued, and thirsts for a beer after a long day as well as being able to move at all is what is most intriguing. It creates a strange image in your head of a little piece of string hopping on and off the barstool, in and out the bar, down the street, and then asking a passersby to pick it (him? her? up and tying it into a knot so as not to rouse suspicion from all of the bartenders that have already rejected him. It's also funny considering the string seems to think that if it were a bow, that would somehow be more acceptable.
There's an element of magic realism throughout the story, most notably noted in the reactions of the bartenders when a string wants to ask for a beer. And the fact that "they don't serve strings" implies that there's more than one "living" string in this universe and they seem to get strings walking into the bar like that all the time.
There was a repetition that set the joke up as well, and the length is notably long, not too long but long enough and easy enough to read so that the audience doesn't lose interest, and is forced to invest their time into the reading or listening to said joke.
2.) The Gandhi Story
Sometimes short is good! Practically everyone knows about Gandhi and his story as well as what he looked like so even though it was short, the familiarity of the character can draw the attention of the audience more easily. There is no need for a longer story full of details because the backstory of Gandhi is so well-known amongst the general population.
The joke starts out normal enough, it could have even been a normal story, so the punchline was sort of unexpected. And the punchline itself referenced yet another popular "expression" from the film Mary Poppins. There are parodies and remakes of that movie all the time, and even if you don't remember any of the other songs, chances are you most certainly remember "Supercalifragilisticexpialadocious" and how that part of the song goes (I didn't even need to look up the spelling to know that it was spelled right, there was just a general knowledge of it in my head from sounding out the word using the melody-- it's similar to the Alphabet Song in that respect).
So here we have two well-known pieces of knowledge (Gandhi and that song from Mary Poppins) coming together in one joke. It's easy to understand, it's relatable, and you immediately get this image in your head of Gandhi mixed with the comical scenes and tunes from Mary Poppins.
3.) The Plate Story
In the plate story, it was a pun on the phrase "there's no place like home for the holidays". Even though the audience is most likely fully aware of the expression being used, and has to invest almost as much time and effort into the joke as the string story, the reason why I didn't rank it as funny as the first or second joke was because the story itself was rather boring. No absurdity, no strange image in your head, there is nothing in the story that somehow contrasts strangely with our normal daily life. Not to mention, I couldn't really relate much to the story in general. I don't even know what an upper plate is. I had to look it up on the internet. But it was still an alright joke because even if you didn't know what an upper plate was, the name itself gives you a good idea of what it could be, plus for me at least the imagery of that wasn't essential to the punchline. All I needed to know was that this guy had and upper plate and it was eroding. Maybe my lack of knowledge did somehow detract from the hilarity of the joke but I'm not too sure. Maybe this joke will only appeal to a certain crowd.. like people with upper plates. And dentists.
4.) The Bear Story
The reason why I ranked this the least funniest was because it was even more unrelatable than the third story, and at least in the third story I was more familiar with the punchline's expression being used. I had to read the last line a few times to understand what the story was referencing, and even when I DID figure out the reference, I still couldn't relate to the story. "Would you believe a lawyer who told you the check was in the mail" is not something I hear every day. I think it only relates to people who NEED lawyers or deal with lawyers in class, and I and most likely a lot of people in the younger generations don't need one. I feel like this joke better caters to a certain group (much like the chess joke in class). When I read the joke out loud, saying "Czechoslovakian" was a bit of a drag on the flow of the joke as well. This was a very biased conclusion but I just can't see how a majority of a group would find this joke funny considering the unfamiliarity of the punchline's expression.
A good point that I can think of though is that it had that element of absurdity (a bear swallowing a person whole?) but other than that there was no real element of shock that I could find. A person gets eaten by a bear and the sheriff shoots it. That is all.
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Blog #4: Data Set 1 Analysis
Coding Format:
Emotion
Questions
Answers
[Silence]
Facts
Coincidences
Additional Commentary (Separate from Interviewee Answers)
Family
Age
School Reaction
How Lives Changed
Politicization
Headnotes:
Jaylecia lived in NYC when 9/11 happened. Her school was in the Bronx.
She was a freshman in high school and remembers the day well.
The administration didn't tell the students anything. School continued as normally as possible. But she describes the school as feeling full of panic.
The security guards shouted in the hallways, "We're at war! We're at war!"
Parents rushed to pull their children out of school for the day.
On the other hand, the panic didn't deter her health teacher from making an ill-advised joke about a plane crashing into a building, a joke that Jaylecia didn't understand the context of until she found out for herself what really happened.
She went home during fifth period when it was easy to skip school (it was a lunch period).
No one was home when she got there. Her parents were at work and her sister attended a different school that also didn't dismiss the students. She didn't go back to school once she learned what happened via television news broadcasts.
She said that 9/11 changed her. Before that day, she barely knew anything about politics and what it had to do with her but after the event, she became more aware of politics in the US and took it upon herself to pay attention to the political climate. She recalls how obsessed every news channel was afterwards, all you heard were the words "terrorism" and "Al Qaeda". She also recalls how everyone seemed united soon after the attacks but a few years later it was evident that there was a divide between people once again.
--
The Interview
Jaylecia was the interviewer and I was the one being interviewed.
Q: When and where were you born?
A: May 20th, 1992 in Newark Beth Israel.
Jaylecia: "Oh wow you're young." She herself is in her mid-twenties.
Q: Where did you grow up?
A: Maplewood, NJ.
Q: How old were you when 9/11 happened?
A: I was I think nine years old when it happened, in Tuscan Elementary School.
Q: Describe what you remember about 9/11 to the best of your ability.
A: I remember being dismissed from classes, I don't remember any announcement telling us what happened. My dad picked me up and tried to explain to me what was going on but in his broken English it was hard to understand what he was trying to tell me. It wasn't until I got home and turned on the television that I learned what happened. I remember crying for at least an hour. I still didn't really understand it but I knew that people died and that bothered me the most. Almost every channel stopped broadcasting shows in favor of a patriotic message that went out to those affected in the attacks.
My dad told me that he and my mom were on the highway when 9/11 happened. The highway they were on had a good view of NYC and traffic had completely halted because everyone was watching the World Trade Center fall. My grandfather eventually called and told them how it happened. My parents made a U-turn to pick me up from school.
Q: How did you feel about the event?
A: I still didn't really understand what happened but I was sad because I knew that people were dying.
Q: Do you know anyone personally involved?
A: I know some parents of my classmates volunteered to clear the rubble days after the event.
Q: How did you feel about the events that happened?
A: I still didn't pay much attention to the news but when I did it was always talking about terrorism and Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and those were always the three things I heard the most. But being a kid, I never felt truly impacted by what happened.
I never thought about it before, but in the years following 9/11 my dad installed a security gate in the driveway and my parents installed a home security system but I never linked their actions to 9/11 until just now.
Q: How do you feel about the event now?
A: I still feel sad about everyone involved in 9/11, especially those that died. But I also feel sympathy for the people who are Muslims or are mistaken as Muslims (Sikhs), pretty much those of Middle Eastern and Southern Asian descent who still have to face prejudice, discrimination and racism for things they didn't have any part of.
--
The Pattern
In both Jaylecia and my cases, the beginning of our stories started out with facts. Generally they began with the age and also locations (I was in Tuscan and she was in high school in the Bronx). These facts are followed by the school reaction to 9/11, and after that comes our reaction (emotions) of what happened mixed in with more facts. Sometimes the coding would overlap at certain parts. For the most part, there was a description of change towards the end of the interviews. The only difference is that mine ended with emotion and hers stopped at the change/politicization.
Conclusion
Emotion
Questions
Answers
[Silence]
Facts
Coincidences
Additional Commentary (Separate from Interviewee Answers)
Family
Age
School Reaction
How Lives Changed
Politicization
Headnotes:
Jaylecia lived in NYC when 9/11 happened. Her school was in the Bronx.
She was a freshman in high school and remembers the day well.
The administration didn't tell the students anything. School continued as normally as possible. But she describes the school as feeling full of panic.
The security guards shouted in the hallways, "We're at war! We're at war!"
Parents rushed to pull their children out of school for the day.
On the other hand, the panic didn't deter her health teacher from making an ill-advised joke about a plane crashing into a building, a joke that Jaylecia didn't understand the context of until she found out for herself what really happened.
She went home during fifth period when it was easy to skip school (it was a lunch period).
No one was home when she got there. Her parents were at work and her sister attended a different school that also didn't dismiss the students. She didn't go back to school once she learned what happened via television news broadcasts.
She said that 9/11 changed her. Before that day, she barely knew anything about politics and what it had to do with her but after the event, she became more aware of politics in the US and took it upon herself to pay attention to the political climate. She recalls how obsessed every news channel was afterwards, all you heard were the words "terrorism" and "Al Qaeda". She also recalls how everyone seemed united soon after the attacks but a few years later it was evident that there was a divide between people once again.
--
The Interview
Jaylecia was the interviewer and I was the one being interviewed.
Q: When and where were you born?
A: May 20th, 1992 in Newark Beth Israel.
Jaylecia: "Oh wow you're young." She herself is in her mid-twenties.
Q: Where did you grow up?
A: Maplewood, NJ.
Q: How old were you when 9/11 happened?
A: I was I think nine years old when it happened, in Tuscan Elementary School.
Q: Describe what you remember about 9/11 to the best of your ability.
A: I remember being dismissed from classes, I don't remember any announcement telling us what happened. My dad picked me up and tried to explain to me what was going on but in his broken English it was hard to understand what he was trying to tell me. It wasn't until I got home and turned on the television that I learned what happened. I remember crying for at least an hour. I still didn't really understand it but I knew that people died and that bothered me the most. Almost every channel stopped broadcasting shows in favor of a patriotic message that went out to those affected in the attacks.
My dad told me that he and my mom were on the highway when 9/11 happened. The highway they were on had a good view of NYC and traffic had completely halted because everyone was watching the World Trade Center fall. My grandfather eventually called and told them how it happened. My parents made a U-turn to pick me up from school.
Q: How did you feel about the event?
A: I still didn't really understand what happened but I was sad because I knew that people were dying.
Q: Do you know anyone personally involved?
A: I know some parents of my classmates volunteered to clear the rubble days after the event.
Q: How did you feel about the events that happened?
A: I still didn't pay much attention to the news but when I did it was always talking about terrorism and Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and those were always the three things I heard the most. But being a kid, I never felt truly impacted by what happened.
I never thought about it before, but in the years following 9/11 my dad installed a security gate in the driveway and my parents installed a home security system but I never linked their actions to 9/11 until just now.
Q: How do you feel about the event now?
A: I still feel sad about everyone involved in 9/11, especially those that died. But I also feel sympathy for the people who are Muslims or are mistaken as Muslims (Sikhs), pretty much those of Middle Eastern and Southern Asian descent who still have to face prejudice, discrimination and racism for things they didn't have any part of.
--
The Pattern
In both Jaylecia and my cases, the beginning of our stories started out with facts. Generally they began with the age and also locations (I was in Tuscan and she was in high school in the Bronx). These facts are followed by the school reaction to 9/11, and after that comes our reaction (emotions) of what happened mixed in with more facts. Sometimes the coding would overlap at certain parts. For the most part, there was a description of change towards the end of the interviews. The only difference is that mine ended with emotion and hers stopped at the change/politicization.
Conclusion
There was a chain of reactions. 9/11 was THE action. The first reaction was the school's. The second reaction was us. And from our reactions came out our emotions, as well as how much (or how little) life changed after the initial action. The pattern was basically like this:
Fact -> School Reaction -> Personal Reaction/Emotions -> Life Change
Blog #3: Oral History Data
Headnotes:
Jaylecia lived in NYC when 9/11 happened. Her school was in the Bronx.
She was a freshman in high school and remembers the day well.
The administration didn't tell the students anything. School continued as normally as possible. But she describes the school as feeling full of panic.
The security guards shouted in the hallways, "We're at war! We're at war!"
Parents rushed to pull their children out of school for the day.
On the other hand, the panic didn't deter her health teacher from making an ill-advised joke about a plane crashing into a building, a joke that Jaylecia didn't understand the context of until she found out for herself what really happened.
She went home during fifth period when it was easy to skip school (it was a lunch period).
No one was home when she got there. Her parents were at work and her sister attended a different school that also didn't dismiss the students. She didn't go back to school once she learned what happened via television news broadcasts.
She said that 9/11 changed her. Before that day, she barely knew anything about politics and what it had to do with her but after the event, she became more aware of politics in the US and took it upon herself to pay attention to the political climate. She recalls how obsessed every news channel was afterwards, all you heard were the words "terrorism" and "Al Qaeda". She also recalls how everyone seemed united soon after the attacks but a few years later it was evident that there was a divide between people once again.
--
The Interview
Jaylecia was the interviewer and I was the one being interviewed.
Q: When and where were you born?
A: May 20th, 1992 in Newark Beth Israel.
Jaylecia: "Oh wow you're young." She herself is in her mid-twenties.
Q: Where did you grow up?
A: Maplewood, NJ.
Q: How old were you when 9/11 happened?
A: I was I think nine years old when it happened, in Tuscan Elementary School.
Q: Describe what you remember about 9/11 to the best of your ability.
A: I remember being dismissed from classes, I don't remember any announcement telling us what happened. My dad picked me up and tried to explain to me what was going on but in his broken English it was hard to understand what he was trying to tell me. It wasn't until I got home and turned on the television that I learned what happened. I remember crying for at least an hour. I still didn't really understand it but I knew that people died and that bothered me the most. Almost every channel stopped broadcasting shows in favor of a patriotic message that went out to those affected in the attacks.
My dad told me that he and my mom were on the highway when 9/11 happened. The highway they were on had a good view of NYC and traffic had completely halted because everyone was watching the World Trade Center fall. My grandfather eventually called and told them how it happened. My parents made a U-turn to pick me up from school.
Q: How did you feel about the event?
A: I still didn't really understand what happened but I was sad because I knew that people were dying.
Q: Do you know anyone personally involved?
A: I know some parents of my classmates volunteered to clear the rubble days after the event.
Q: How did you feel about the events that happened?
A: I still didn't pay much attention to the news but when I did it was always talking about terrorism and Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and those were always the three things I heard the most. But being a kid, I never felt truly impacted by what happened.
I never thought about it before, but in the years following 9/11 my dad installed a security gate in the driveway and my parents installed a home security system but I never linked their actions to 9/11 until just now.
Q: How do you feel about the event now?
A: I still feel sad about everyone involved in 9/11, especially those that died. But I also feel sympathy for the people who are Muslims or are mistaken as Muslims (Sikhs), pretty much those of Middle Eastern and Southern Asian descent who still have to face prejudice, discrimination and racism for things they didn't have any part of.
Jaylecia lived in NYC when 9/11 happened. Her school was in the Bronx.
She was a freshman in high school and remembers the day well.
The administration didn't tell the students anything. School continued as normally as possible. But she describes the school as feeling full of panic.
The security guards shouted in the hallways, "We're at war! We're at war!"
Parents rushed to pull their children out of school for the day.
On the other hand, the panic didn't deter her health teacher from making an ill-advised joke about a plane crashing into a building, a joke that Jaylecia didn't understand the context of until she found out for herself what really happened.
She went home during fifth period when it was easy to skip school (it was a lunch period).
No one was home when she got there. Her parents were at work and her sister attended a different school that also didn't dismiss the students. She didn't go back to school once she learned what happened via television news broadcasts.
She said that 9/11 changed her. Before that day, she barely knew anything about politics and what it had to do with her but after the event, she became more aware of politics in the US and took it upon herself to pay attention to the political climate. She recalls how obsessed every news channel was afterwards, all you heard were the words "terrorism" and "Al Qaeda". She also recalls how everyone seemed united soon after the attacks but a few years later it was evident that there was a divide between people once again.
--
The Interview
Jaylecia was the interviewer and I was the one being interviewed.
Q: When and where were you born?
A: May 20th, 1992 in Newark Beth Israel.
Jaylecia: "Oh wow you're young." She herself is in her mid-twenties.
Q: Where did you grow up?
A: Maplewood, NJ.
Q: How old were you when 9/11 happened?
A: I was I think nine years old when it happened, in Tuscan Elementary School.
Q: Describe what you remember about 9/11 to the best of your ability.
A: I remember being dismissed from classes, I don't remember any announcement telling us what happened. My dad picked me up and tried to explain to me what was going on but in his broken English it was hard to understand what he was trying to tell me. It wasn't until I got home and turned on the television that I learned what happened. I remember crying for at least an hour. I still didn't really understand it but I knew that people died and that bothered me the most. Almost every channel stopped broadcasting shows in favor of a patriotic message that went out to those affected in the attacks.
My dad told me that he and my mom were on the highway when 9/11 happened. The highway they were on had a good view of NYC and traffic had completely halted because everyone was watching the World Trade Center fall. My grandfather eventually called and told them how it happened. My parents made a U-turn to pick me up from school.
Q: How did you feel about the event?
A: I still didn't really understand what happened but I was sad because I knew that people were dying.
Q: Do you know anyone personally involved?
A: I know some parents of my classmates volunteered to clear the rubble days after the event.
Q: How did you feel about the events that happened?
A: I still didn't pay much attention to the news but when I did it was always talking about terrorism and Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden and those were always the three things I heard the most. But being a kid, I never felt truly impacted by what happened.
I never thought about it before, but in the years following 9/11 my dad installed a security gate in the driveway and my parents installed a home security system but I never linked their actions to 9/11 until just now.
Q: How do you feel about the event now?
A: I still feel sad about everyone involved in 9/11, especially those that died. But I also feel sympathy for the people who are Muslims or are mistaken as Muslims (Sikhs), pretty much those of Middle Eastern and Southern Asian descent who still have to face prejudice, discrimination and racism for things they didn't have any part of.
Blog #2: What IS Analysis?
My definition of analysis is the attempt to break something down and study every part of that subject. It's the dis-assembly of a certain thing, letting the pieces fall into disarray out of its package, questioning every piece and in the process, learning how to piece it back to its original self. In other words, it's examining every piece of a certain whole long enough to know it inside and out.
You're supposed to take a piece of that whole and ask yourself what it is, why it exists and how and when it got there in the first place. You sit down with this little nugget of information and you think about how it relates to the other pieces waiting to be discovered and learned about. And after all of your hours or days or weeks or months or years of peering intensely through a magnifying glass, maybe, MAYBE you can put that down and MAYBE you'll be able to say you understand that thing completely.
Maybe you'll take what you were originally working with but omit a few pieces here and there. Maybe you'll piece it back together so that it's better than it was before. Maybe you change a piece or two. And when you're done you'll have put together something that is no longer something that you started with. You added your own knowledge and insight into this thing that started out without any relation to you, but in your dissection you've taken something and made it into your own. Analysis is more than just analyzing something and then putting it on the shelf. You analyze in order to understand, and with that you turn it into something unique. Something that you share with other people who are also analyzing that same thing, and you compare results. Analysis doesn't end with the full comprehension of something. You take what you learned and reinvent it into something better and new.
Friday, September 14, 2012
Blog #1: Introduction
The number of topics that people like to research is too broad to fit into one blog entry. For that reason, it's really hard for me to answer a question that can be easily answered with the word "everything" (if you're feeling particularly lazy). But it's true, the range of topics is impossible to measure. In high school I had a classmate who did his thesis paper on the history of baseball helmets, and that is no joke. Ten months of research that this young man labored over yielded far past the ten-page-minimum for our thesis papers and, according to our history teacher, it was a stunning feat. If I tried hard enough I could write a full book about socks or napkins. In any case, it would be useless to attempt to list even the categories of possible research topics. It's just not going to happen.
As for what I personally like to research and write about, I have been gaining a steady interest in feminism (though I do not label myself as a feminist for my own reasons) as well as racism. I also have an interest in activism against able-ism and fat-shaming, as well as LGBTQ rights and I include privileges into my writings as well (i.e. male privilege, able-bodied privilege, etc). I'm pretty new to all of these concepts as far as "blogging activism" goes so I'm not yet confident enough in my voice or my knowledge to play a fully active part in that part of the internet but part of the reason why I'm an English major is so I'll have the skills to contribute to that activism.
As for what I personally like to research and write about, I have been gaining a steady interest in feminism (though I do not label myself as a feminist for my own reasons) as well as racism. I also have an interest in activism against able-ism and fat-shaming, as well as LGBTQ rights and I include privileges into my writings as well (i.e. male privilege, able-bodied privilege, etc). I'm pretty new to all of these concepts as far as "blogging activism" goes so I'm not yet confident enough in my voice or my knowledge to play a fully active part in that part of the internet but part of the reason why I'm an English major is so I'll have the skills to contribute to that activism.
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