Mischief Managed Mug

So I may be behind in this neat little invention but I saw it on Facebook and had to share it.


When I was younger my mom had this cool cup that if you poured a hot liquid into it, the cup changed. It originally would say "I love you" around the top, but with a warm liquid the cup would then show the image of the phrase in Sign Language.


Well, this idea has been transformed by Harry Potter fans. A Mischief Managed Heat Transformation Mug has come on the market! Take a look here!

If you would like to buy this mug follow this Link.

I thought this was really neat because it brings to life the magical world of Harry Potter. While it may not actually be magic, I know that it feels like magic when you're a kid. My mom's "I love you" mug was my favorite whenever we had hot chocolate because it made it feel magical. To not only incorporate the words but also the magical theme of the series into this mug brings a whole new level of awesome to this product!

Press Release for Ivanhoe and Ivanhoe Project

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Finding Literary Connections in Ivanhoe, MN

 

It has always been clear that Ivanhoe, Minn. was named after Sir Walter Scott's novel, Ivanhoe; however, it is not so clear where the suggestion first originated or the specific connections that lie between the town and the novel.

A new wikia page, now accessible online, called Literary Connections: Ivanhoe and Ivanhoe helps to enlighten the public.

"I was intrigued by the connections I saw while reading Scott’s novel," says Brittany Vlaminck, creator of Literary Connections: Ivanhoe and Ivanhoe and native of Ivanhoe, Minn. "It gives my hometown a deeper meaning that I wanted to share with the public." Vlaminck shares that this sparked the idea for the project.

After reading Scott’s novel, Vlaminck researched the town’s history at the public library in Ivanhoe, Minn. After this, she traveled the town to find literary connections that can be noted between the town’s streets and benches and Scott’s novel. This information can be found on Wikia.com.

“Ivanhoe is actually named after an estate owned by a knight named Wilfred, this creates the mental image that the favored knight comes from the town in Southwest Minnesota,” says Vlaminck. Information like this can be found with in the 21 pages about how the town's name and nickname came to be and their connections to the novel. It also shares information about the characters and places the town's streets and benches of Harthill Walk are named after.

The site is strictly educational and free to the public. Visit at Literary Connections: Ivanhoe and Ivanhoe.

If you would like more information, contact Brittany Vlaminck at 507-828-4094 or email her at brittany.vlaminck@trojans.dsu.edu.

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IZombie: Comic Book "turned" TV Series

iZombie Ad featuring Rose McIver as Liv Moore

IZombie, a new CW show, was first introduced to the public on March 17th, 2015. The show follows the life, or rather living death, of Olivia "Liv" Moore played by Rose McIver. This character is a young woman who was turned into a zombie when, at a party, was scratched by a fellow zombie. The show starts five months after the incident. Her live has been turned upside down because of this change, including her career choices, her love life and her eating habits.

Liv has gained an ability that allows her access to memories, habits and abilities of the people whose brains she consumes. Because of this, mixed with her access to the brains of murder victims through her job as a mortician assistant, she becomes the assistant to a cop that looks into these murders.


This show, created by Rob Thomas and producer Diane Ruggiero, is a loose adaptation of the comic book, iZombie, written by Chris Roberson and illustrated by Michael Allred.

iZombie comic book cover page of #1

The comic book's main character is Gwendolyn Dylan, a 20-something grave-digging zombie, whose best friends are a ghost and a were-terrier. Gwen also has the ability to gain access to memories, habits and abilities of the different people through the consumption of their brains. She, just like in the show, uses this ability to help solve murder cases of the people whose brains she has consumed.

The original version consists of many introductions to supernatural characters, including zombies, ghosts, were-terriers, and vampires.



While the two versions of the story differ greatly, we can still see that the underlining idea of the original story is present across these two medias. Both of these stories are showing a young woman living life as a crime fighting zombie.

I'm normally not a fan of when new medias change much of the original story, but I do like what CW has going and I'm hoping they start to incorporate more of the original plot by adding in other supernatural beings.

Gaming and Advertising

I recently read a section of a book called "Play Between Worlds" by T. L. Taylor. The section, or rather chapter, was entitled "Where The Women Are" and the chapter discussed how women have become very common players in the gaming world. While the chapter focuses on women who play Everquest, it can be said, for almost any game, that women have become common and valuable to gaming culture. So if this is becoming so common, why are we still focusing our advertising strategies towards men?

The following link will take you to a paper I wrote for my Contemporary Rhetoric class that discusses the advertising strategies of this game and how new media allows easier access to these advertisements.

Advertisement Analysis - Game of War: Fire Age

Making Bank on Youtube

So, originally I had started a blog post today to discuss some video game advertisements I had seen recently. When I opened up YouTube to grab links to the video game advertisements, I was recommended to a video that looked really interesting. I opened it, and THREE AND A HALF HOURS LATER I finally closed YouTube up. And yet in those three and a half hours, I never made it to the video game advertisements I had been looking for.

I have no idea how many videos I watched during this time, and to tell you the truth, I don't remember what they were all about. But during this time, I remember feeling extremely hungry and not being able to put my computer down. I was so intrigued and entertained that it made it hard to look away.

When I finally closed YouTube and looked at the two paragraphs I had originally started, I dreaded the idea of going back to YouTube for fear that this would happen again. This is not the first time I have diverged into binge watching when I was supposed to be doing something important, and it probably won't be the last.

I started thinking about all of those videos that were created by the same users. Here are some of my favorite YouTube channels that are consistently adding new videos:

BuzzFeed

Here are some of the other BuzzFeed channels.

CollegeHumor

JennaMarbles

An article from CelebrityNetWorth, called 25 Highest Earning YouTube Stars, estimated (in 2013) that the annual income that Jenna Marbles makes is about $4.3 million, while CollegeHumor only makes about $3.3 million. BuzzFeed isn't even on this list but it's likely that it is also making a fairly good sum from their YouTube channels.

It was amazing to me to see this because these people have made careers using this new new media. They have established a fan base that continues to grow and change, but the truth is that as long as they keep posting, there will likely always be that fan base for the information they offer. It's inspirational to see these channels succeeding to the point of making millions for simply getting views.

The study of English is a study of the way we communicate with the world through language and shared stories and that's exactly what YouTube allows us to do - share stories.  JennaMarbles has been sharing her life story for over four years. She has introduced the public to her family, friends, boyfriends and pets. CollegeHumor has shared knowledge and stories that are focused on the humorous thoughts and situations we deal with in college or around that time frame of our lives. BuzzFeed tells stories, shares information and discusses serious topics. All of these stories can be experienced over and over again the same way we can experience literature over and over again. YouTube just allows us to experience these stories in a different format than classical literature.

One last thing I'd like to note is that since all of the videos are like little stories, and because they are all within this larger frame that is YouTube, we can consider YouTube a Frame Narrative!! Woah! Mind Blown!

Generation Y - Traits

For another class, me and a group of my peers are looking to create a project for our Contemporary Rhetoric class. We were discussing our audience, and since the prompt suggested targeting our generation, I started looking into Generation Y.

This generation normally consists of individuals that were born between the 1980s and the 2000s. It is also called the Millennium Generation, the Echo Boomers, and IGen, or Internet Generation.

An article found on About Careers.com called Generation Y by Sarah Kane says that the most common traits of the individuals from generation Y is that they are tech-savvy, family-centric, team oriented, achievement oriented, and attention-craving.

Agree: I was intrigued. It is well known that our generation has grown up using a wide variety of different mediums, making the tech-savvy observation likely to be correct. And thinking about how this group project has already been going, I can see that every one in my group (all of which are members of the Y Generation) is also very team and achievement-oriented because they are working together to create a proposal and to create a full proof plan on how to attack this project. We have also already planned future meetings to keep updated with each others work so that this is a group effort rather than individual work. This idea of attention-craving suggested more that we like praise and feedback on our work. We want to offer the best work we possibly can because that is what our generation has always been told to do. "Do your best." And because we have this desire, we look for someone to tell us whether they think we did well or if we could have done better.

To Disagree: The only trait in this list that I feel any disagreement with is this idea that our generation is family-centric. I'm not saying that we aren't just that I believe there is a better way to describe this trait. Personally, I am very family oriented, but the reason I like a flexible schedule (as the article suggests) is because there are many things I want to do with my life outside of work. I believe it's important to have a job to provide for our families and our lifestyles, but I have things I want to learn and to be a part of outside of my job. As I'm looking into a career of editing, I'm thinking to myself about my desire to travel to all fifty states, and to become a sommelier, and to own a stylish wardrobe made of dresses and giant sweaters and far too many pairs of leggings. I want to read the Classics of different time periods and locations, and to compare them to the novels that are now being created today. These are all activities that I need free time to be able to do.

I feel that our generation focuses so much on Internet and other mediums because they offer us the ability to communicate, write, read, work - all while on the go. We can share information easily through these new medias and we have the ability to learn new things with just a few clicks of the buttons on keyboards and touch screens. This ability is what we crave because it offers us the option of having free time to see the things we want to see and do the things we want to do while keeping a job and earning that living that is so important in our survival. 

Back to the Top: So back to the different traits that describe this generation - I feel that the phrase "family-centric" is the wrong word choice. I feel that the trait they are trying to describe here is "Self Indulging". We believe in an understanding of balance of life between work and fun. We allow ourselves to enjoy life whether that means focusing more time on our families or focusing on goals outside of our work and home lives, we let ourselves indulge on the pleasures that life has to offer. 

This discussion shows the connection between English and New Media because it is an article that a writer created that was offered to the public in this medium to reach a large mass of people. Anyone who wanted to know about Generation Y had the ability to find this knowledge by just a few clicks of the keyboard or screen. New media has allowed us to find information faster than before. It also allows us to share our thoughts of the things we read and experience the way this blog is allowing me to share my thoughts after reading Ms. Kane's article.