Hi! my name is Andrew Riley and i graduated from Goodrich High School and I plan to major in Environmental Science.

Project Two RD

Project 3 RD

http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre2013061400

                                                Third Response

 In Drugs: Case for Legalizing Marijuana by Gore Vidal, Gore establishes his stance on America’s “war on drugs” pretty obviously in the title. In the introduction he establishes his authority on the matter by confessing that he has tried most every drug at least once, appealing to our ethos.

            Vidal points out that there are people who will go “if everyone is allowed to take drugs everyone will and the GNP will decrease, the Commies will stop us from making everyone free, and we shall end up a race of Zombies, passively murmuring "groovie" to one another” but his response to this enthymeme is to say reasonably sane people wouldn’t do drugs if they know what effects the drugs will have and what. Vidal concedes that there are some people who would become addicts anyways and to that dilemma he says it’s too bad, and that it’s within a man’s power to kill himself if he wants.

            Vidal goes on to create a parallel of this “war on drugs” with the prohibition of alcohol earlier in American history by pointing out that the prohibition caused a huge crime wave and caused the death of thousands of people do to bad alcohol. The prohibition only lasted a very short time because people realized it was a bad idea and that it would easier and safer to put restrictions on it rather than to just keep it outright illegal. Since that was an effective solution to that very similar problem, using logos we can connect the dots and say “why don’t we do the same thing?”

Vidal references a case where the Mexican marijuana trade was curtailed by the federal government and how the deaths from harder drugs went up and then blame those deaths on the government. This plays on our pathos, or our emotions because the government who is supposed to be protecting us inadvertently ended up killing people and hooking people on harder, more harmful drugs.

Vidal’s use of enthymemes and appeals to ethos pathos and logos would create a a persuasive article if it wasnt for his conclusion in which he seems to give up and say the laws wont be changed because the government would lose money. It was very clever of him to bring up the prohibition and then to using specific examples to play on Ethos, Pathos, and Logos.

                                                                   http://www.quickmeme.com/p/3oi209               

Roughest of rough drafts:

            Everyone knows what a meme is. Memes can be found everywhere in modern day society. The purpose of this paper is to analyze what a meme is, the ways they can be categorized in to genres, and further into sub genre’s.

A meme is a picture from a popular television sow, movie, comic, or band and edited to add text at the top and bottom of said picture. Memes are used to express peoples’ opinions on any and all topics, and are usually funny because of irony or satire.

     To show I know what im talking about, im going to analyze the meme at the top of the paper. The meme I have chosen to analyze is the famous “one does not simply” category. For a meme to be able to be part of a specific category, or genre, it has to meet certain prerequisites. The meme above meets the prerequisites because it has a picture of Boromir (from lord of the rings: fellowship of the ring) and the first half of his famous quote “one does not imply walk into Mordor”.

     There are a few different types of sub-genres for meme’s, like how movies have more than one sub-genres. The original meme’s text at the bottom of the picture is the last half sentence of Boromir’s quote “walk into Mordor” and was associated with tasks that people said will be easy when it’s in fact near impossible the original meme falls into the sub-genre of traditional.

      The meme from above falls into the sub-category of variation. It belongs in the sub-genre of variation because at the bottom of the picture, instead of saying “walk into Mordor”, it says write a paper without procrastinating. It also adds to the meme’s humour because almost everyone has procrastinated on writing a paper when they should have been working on it.

     There is also a third sub genre I have dubbed photoshopped because meme makers will photo shop some identify feature of the original meme and put it onto a separate picture like in the example above.

     This is the meme I made. It fits into the meme’s genre because it has the picture of Boromir and the “one does not simply” printed at the top. It fits into the sub-genre of variation because it says “convince your mom to let you stay home from school” instead of “walk into Mordor”.

     In conclusion, memes are pictures with text at the top and bottom and are humorous through the use of irony and satire. Memes can be sorted into genre’s by their picture and script, and further into sub-genre’s by closer scrutiny of the picture and script.

Finest of final drafts:

One Does Not Simply Analyze Memes

     Almost everyone and their monkey’s uncle has seen a meme in today’s modern world. Everywhere you turn on the internet it seems there is some meme trying to make you laugh. Some of you might be asking, “What is this ‘meme’ of which you speak?” and that is what I’m going to answer by analyzing the “one does not simply” meme. This meme is often used as a parody of Boromir’s famous line “One does not simply walk into Mordor” (from Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring) to describe difficult tasks’ that people think is simple or easy, when it is in fact, much harder than they make it sound. Analyzing this one meme I will be able to explain what the prerequisites are to qualify it to be part of a specific meme series, what qualifies a meme to be part of a sub-genre, and of course what makes a meme really a meme.

            We’ll start with what a meme is. A meme is typically a picture or a series of pictures with a set of text at the top and bottom and are often ironic and/or satirical, or sometimes just plain funny. The images are often taken out of popular movies, tv shows, comics, etc. and these pictures then have some type of text printed on them having to do with one topic or another. These memes are typically meant to do no more than make people laugh and or maybe spread awareness of various things in a humorous fashion.

            After memes are made, they can usually be sorted in to a genre based on which picture is used and what text is printed on top of it. For example, in the “one does not simply” meme, they took the image of Boromir and inserted the text “one does not simply walk in to Mordor”. Those are just the requirements for this meme though, in others it could be more or less items of varying complexity to meet the standards of that particular genre.

            Just like how movies and music are divvied up into a myriad of different sub-genre’s, so too are memes. As long as a meme meets the bare minimum standards to be part of its genre it would be considered traditional. For example, the traditional version of “one does not simply” ends with “walk into Mordor” and is associated with situations that people describe as easy but in reality are near impossible.

     What happens more often though is that it will have a slight variation usually through just text, and that is really where memes get creative and funny, because most of the time they are relatable to our own lives. These are the types of memes that can be found throughout the internet because they are the most popular sub-genre of any genre.  For example, with the one does not simply meme instead of ending with “in to Mordor” it will end with something like “win an argument with a woman” or “play one round of a videogame” etc.  

     The example I used at the top is a prime example of this sub-genre. It fits relatively easily into the normal genre because it meets the requirements of having the picture of Boromir and text at the top saying “one does not simply”. It then gets sorted in to the sub-genre category of variation because at the bottom it says “write a paper without procrastinating”. As a bonus, it’s also very relatable, because everyone at some point has probably had a teacher or professor assign a paper due the following week and then waited till the last minute to write it because they procrastinated.

      There’s also one more, but rather uncommon sub-genre that I have dubbed “photoshopped”. They generally don’t go as big as traditional or the variation sub-genres in the sense of mainstream popularity, but they are still worth mentioning. An example of this uncommon sub-genre is where meme makers take the image of Boromir’s head, paste it onto another image of some random person in a scenario where they have either some sort of giant gun, military vehicle, giant animal, etc. and instead of finishing with “Walk into Mordor”, it will end with something related to the task the people in the image are doing.

     This is the meme I created and it demonstrates the variation sub-genre for the “one does not simply” meme pretty well. It has the picture of Boromir along with one does not simply written above his, which puts it in the overall genre. Then on the bottom it says “convince your mom to let you stay home from school” which means it’s a variation. Plus it’s relatable because everyone has tried to convince their mom to not make them go to school at some point in their life but to no avail.

     So in conclusion, “these memes of which I speak” are really not that complicated. A meme is typically a picture or a series of pictures, usually from popular shows, movies and bands with a set of text at the top and bottom that are often ironic and/or satirical, or sometimes just plain funny. Memes are mostly funny because the scenarios are relatable in some way. More than a few memes have an original meme from which sub-genres branch off of, the sub-genre’s being either being just slight variations or some sort of photoshopped. Remember though, every meme is different and unique in it's own way, so enjoy, and maybe even make your own.