Aidem eht ni Yad : Lanif
I wake up in the morning, sleepy eyed and eager to climb straight back into my bed, and without even realizing it I am assaulted by a tidal wave of media. We walk through our lives every day, usually, without realizing the monsoon we’re walking through.
There is media everywhere!
From the time you wake up to a song on the radio up, when you walk down the street and see a billboard for some new toothpaste, and even as the busses drive by you, everywhere you look there’s media. This blog, yes the one you’re reading right now, is media too. Did you even think about that?
Media is more than just a term for the press and all that jazz. Every day, just like everyone else, I interact with the media.
Every. Single. Day.
Just scroll down a little further my friend and I’ll show you the media that I deal with daily.
I wake up in the morning, sleepy eyed and eager to climb straight back into my bed, and without even realizing it I am assaulted by a tidal wave of media. We walk through our lives every day, usually, without realizing the monsoon we’re walking through.
There is media everywhere!
From the time you wake up to a song on the radio up, when you walk down the street and see a billboard for some new toothpaste, and even as the busses drive by you, everywhere you look there’s media. This blog, yes the one you’re reading right now, is media too. Did you even think about that?
Media is more than just a term for the press and all that jazz. Every day, just like everyone else, I interact with the media.
Every. Single. Day.
Just scroll down a little further my friend and I’ll show you the media that I deal with daily.
Sound Recording
Darkness. Silence. And then “…all wrong now / She's ripping wings off of butterflies…”
The song continues and I blindly slap off the iPod/radio alarm chilling beside my head. Every morning (excluding Saturdays and Sundays) I wake to the sound of my music blasting any random song - any random song, I might add, that has not been obtained through bootlegging or piracy because that is very wrong and terrible (Media & Culture). On this fine morning, Paramore’s Brick by Boring is my welcome back to the land of the living.
Paramore's Brick by Boring Brick
Occasionally though, the sound waves don’t quite have that bang to wake me up, so the song weaves itself into my dreams all limbic-ly until the next track does the deed. So far I think my record is 10 minutes without noticing the alarm going off beside me.
Of course… my roommate noticed and was ready to throttle me. Good times.
Radio
Because we live in such a fast pace, media driven world, as soon as I’m rolling out of bed, sleep crust still in my eyes, I reach for my phone. My Razzle, the Blackberry wannabe, is my connection to the world.
Verizon Razzle courtesy of Amazon
I check for texts from a best friend in North Carolina, my mom back in Jersey, or from my boyfriend just one floor away from me. It’s usually an empty inbox in the morning, I mean who would want to get up that early just to text me? But if I have a message, like the lovely ‘are you alive?’ messages I get from the girls in my hall, I respond instantly.
Early phones and transmissions would have noise and interference from other radio wayves (Media & Culture) but today that's not as much of a problem. My phone may not be cool and have 3G and connect to the internet or anything else all these fancy new phones do, but it keeps me alive – yes, my phone is my lifeline.
Internet
As a college student in a high tech school, e-mail and the internet become almost as valuable as blood – if you don’t have it, you may as well be dead.
So once all the morning rituals are completed, I grab my laptop and surf the web a bit before class. The first thing to do is to head over to MyMail and see if there’s anything of importance since email is the most popular use of the internet (Media & Culture).
With E-mail I get messages from the forums of my job at the EMC and status updates from different professors or Financial Aid.
Living up at Schillhammer, heading to the Mail Room is a bit of a hassle. The Champlain mail system is kind enough to understand this, and so I get e-mails when I have packages or a full inbox.
It makes things soo much easier.
Books
Comic books are something a bit of the past that I think everyone should revisit. Whether it’s an old worn copy of Batman and Robin (which would be amazing) or something a bit more recent, seeing the story come alive on the page is something simply amazing to behold. It was after World War II that comics started to move away from superheros and onto other genres (Media & Culture): Enter web comics.
On a biweekly basis I can be found going through a list of about ten different web comics. Web comics are free online and usually updated once or twice a week, but also available in the familiar print form for a small fee. They’re entertaining and great ways to watch an artist’s talent grow over time.
One of my favorite web comics is Looking For Group, a satirical series based on the online addiction, World of Warcraft.
The characters take after the types of characters found in the game while the story makes political and social jabs at regular intervals – all while managing to have a deep plot for the protagonist elf, Cale.
LFG's Slaughter Your World
I first saw the video above based on on the warlock sidekick, Richard, and have been addicted to the comic and his sadistic jokes ever since.
Magazines
Magazines always seem like such a waste to me. A majority of the articles found in magazines can easily be found somewhere on the internet – like everything else these days.
But there are a few publications I’m willing to pick up every now and then. OtakuUSA is one of those. On break I found one of my older copies and was flipping through it today.
August 2009 OtakuUSA Cover
Featuring Edward Elric of FMA Brotherhood
OtakuUSA is one of a number of specialized entertainment magazines (Media & Culture). The magazine focuses on anime and manga straight from Japan, giving American readers updates about what’s happening to series and the companies that host them over on the Japanese side of the world.
It comes with tons of full page pictures to advertise for new and classic series alike, and often comes with a DVD sampler to catch the interest of their readers and hook them on new series.
I don’t usually buy them, and I never subscribe, but when I see an issue with a familiar character on the front, I tend to check it out.
Television
I don’t normally watch a lot of television. I’ll watch a few things like NCIS religiously, but not much else. For me it provides background noise.
The most common white noise of choice is Food Network, a network ranked 14 with over95.5 million subscribers (Media & Culture). While there are a few hosts on there that I cannot stand, Guy Fieri is definitely not one of them. I love all of his shows and there are quite a few of them.
Guy Fieri of Food Network
My roommate and I are definite fans of Food Network. Even when we’re not watching it, we’ll glance over occasionally, see something delicious, and then complain about caf food.
It’s an age old tradition here at Schillhammer 303.
Movies
To get into the holiday spirit, my friend and I grabbed our boyfriends and settled down to watch the most awesome claymation movie ever: The Year Without a Santa Claus. This old school movie is easily one of the best.
We had already watched Santa Claus is Coming to Town and made a ton of jokes about the logistics of that movie as well. For example, baby’s flying from the wind but bunnies sitting there casually watching.
The style of claymation has evolved over recent years with things like Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline. But this movie has been my all time favorite holiday movie since I was a child.
Year Without a Santa Claus' Snow Miser
Video Games
Living at Champlain you’re bound to have a few gamer friends. Fortunately for me, while not being a game major, I’m friends with some really cool ones.
However when my friend gets creamed by her boyfriend in some hockey game, we needed to take our revenge.
Enter Quidditch World Cup.
I trained her for several days in the art of the art of flying around and scoring goals before tonight when we teamed up against her gamer boyfriend and mine… and we lost.
Screenshot from Warner Brothers' Quidditch World Cup
Not the proudest moment in our lives, but we had fun. Which isn't unsual since sports games (even fantasy ones) are some kf the most popular sorts of video games out there (Media & Culture). We went old school and played on the Gamecube, a system many gamers would call obsolete with things like the 360 out, but I still cherish my purple box of a platform.
See, you can’t really escape the media. Media is so much more than paparazzi.
No matter where you are during the day, it’s always right there, waiting to sneak up behind you. You can be chilling quietly in your dorm, and hear the music playing from three doors down, or you’ll be doing research on the internet or from a textbook – it’s all still media.
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I can’t picture a life where all of these media suddenly vanished.
There’d be…nothing really.
No matter where you are during the day, it’s always right there, waiting to sneak up behind you. You can be chilling quietly in your dorm, and hear the music playing from three doors down, or you’ll be doing research on the internet or from a textbook – it’s all still media.
Blogger Logo
I can’t picture a life where all of these media suddenly vanished.
There’d be…nothing really.
