TOW #10 - "Insert Flap 'A' and Throw Away" (Written)

This essay by S.J. Perelman is a humorous piece angrily criticizing the impossibility of the directions included with DIY project. The author is a father of two children, which implicitly conveys to the reader his familiarity with construction projects such as these, since he's the member of the family who, at least in the social culture of the 1940's, is expected to take charge. He uses irony and hyperbole to create a picture of insanity that connects to the feeling that most readers are familiar with when dealing with DIY projects. The main narrative of the essay deals with him putting together a toy truck for his children on Christmas, which should be an easy task, but is absolutely not.

His irony manifests itself in humorous one-liners. He says that the kit "was simplicity itself, easily intelligible to Kettering of General Motors, Professor Millikan, or any first-rate physicist" (par 6). Obviously, simplicity and first-rate physicists do not go together in the same sentence, and Perelman uses this discrepancy to emphasize the difficulty of the kit while simultaneously providing some comic relief. At the beginning of the essay, he describes his difficulty with putting together a closet, and says that "in a period of rapid technological change, however, it was inevitable that a method as cumbersome as the [closet] would be superseded" (2). One would expect that a rapid technological change would make things easier, not harder, yet the toy truck proves especially troublesome to put together.

His hyperbole is another way his humor shines through. At the end of the story, he makes up an ending: him lying in a hospital room. Obviously, no one will hurt themselves that badly when dealing with a simple toy truck, but in emphasizing the unwieldiness of these projects, he went a little overboard. He describes his situation as trapped in a room heated to 340F, which is obviously untrue, but adds to the drama of what he's trying to do. Frankly, his entire debacle with the toy truck is hyperbole, and it amuses the reader and proves his point -- those instructions need to be simplified.

IRB Intro - The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker

The Language Instinct, by Steven Pinker, takes a unique look at the way language is processed in our brains, which I think is a much more interesting angle than the usual one that is taken, which usually goes along the lines of "look at how weird and jumbled and strange the English language is!" I mean, what do you expect from a language that's hundreds of years in the making? I've always thought it's so fascinating how little kids can pick up language so easily, and how that aptitude is just shut off in our brains the older we get. I'm really excited to learn something new from this book!

TOW #9 - "CNN Holds Morning Meeting..." (Written)

The full title of this Onion article is "CNN Holds Morning Meeting To Decide What Viewers Should Panic About For Rest of Day", a satirical look at the way mass media stirs up a frenzy over innocuous, or at least non-urgent, news stories. Though the title specifically calls out CNN, this article applies to all major news networks, who are guilty of exaggerating news in order to keep viewers watching. The article includes "quotes" from "senior CNN staffers" to lend to its credibility, although being a satirical article, it only needs this credibility to mimic the format of what it's mocking, i.e. news articles. 

This article includes examples of topics that would be aired on a typical news channel in an alarmist manner, such as "the threats posed by pit bulls" and "a potentially dangerous new teen trend...in which kids stay up all night texting". These things are obviously harmless, but the Onion is comparing these ridiculous examples to CNN's everyday lineup of news, making the reader question how serious and urgent many of the stories in the actual news are. 

In this article, the people who make these "decisions" are portrayed as flippant about their "responsibilities": "the discourse was briefly derailed by a recounting of the previous night's NFL game and discussions of staff members' upcoming weekend plans". Though we may think of those working for mass media outlets as hard-hitting journalists, when some of the stories that are aired are more closely examined, the reader may realize that they may as well be normal people who don't take their job seriously enough to do research or present an unbiased, non-radical viewpoint.