....Except, I'm not an African American record producer, rapper, actor, and men's fashion designer. In fact, I'm none of those things, so you can scratch that statement all together. I was just quoting the hit song "TikTok" by Ke$ha. I'd be surprised if you've never heard of it, I remember in the summer of '09 you couldn't turn the RADIO without hearing the songs catchy beat. That's probably because a good chunk of the radio is made of "Top 40 radio--also called contemporary hit radio" (media & culture pg 113), meaning you'll hear the same chart topping songs about a trillion times over until they get stuck in your head for days at a time. There was once a time "Tiktok" entered my limbic brain and stayed there for what seemed like a month (Click the video below and I'm sure you'll be able to see how crazy I was going with that song stuck in my head!).
In reality, I wake up in the morning feeling like Andrea Drag, the media mastermind and Champlain college student. What makes me a media mastermind you ask? From the moment I wake up ALREADY I'm using the MCM-120 power tools. Convergence. Boo-YAH. I used converenge by waking up to the buzzing of my CELL PHONE. That's right, ladies and gents, my cell phone is not only a phone, but an alarm clock! (it has other cool features like games, email, texting etc that also make it convergence savvy too). In case you're not sure what convergence is, the Media and Culture book does a good job of explaining, stating that media convergence is "the technological merging of content in different mass media" (pg 9), so my cell phone is a fabulous example.
<---I usually sleep like this girl, with my cell phone tucked under my pillow so my alarm with definetly wake me up! (photo from Google Images)
As the media mastermind that I am, I usually don't leave the dorm without my cell phone and IPOD. On my way to class, I pop my ear buds in and rock out to "Love Today" my Mika, which I downloaded on itunes for 99 cents. Of that 99 cents, 57 cents goes to the "full record company share", according to the graph on page 99 of the Media and Culture book. Interesting, eh? As always, the song puts me in a peppy, optimistic mood even on those gray over-cast days Burlington has been having recently. (emotional transfer at its finest!) I usually like to sing along whenever, I listen and you can too by click on the lyric video below!
I arrive at my Concepts of Self class pumped up and ready to "love today", and my good mood only increases when my teacher puts the psychological thriller MOVIE "Memento" in to watch and analyze. "Hollywood has become America's storyteller" (Media & Culture pg 213) and this movie certainly tells a story! Memento is about a man with short term memory loss (meaning he can't create new memories), which becomes especially inconvenient considering he is trying to track down the man who raped and killed his wife. This movie had me in flow state from beginning to end--My neocortex was in overdrive trying to understand the complicated plot, my limbic mind wanted me to tear up whenever the main character had memories of his wife and my reptilian brain was pumping during all the intense action scenes.
To the left is a promotional poster for the movie Momento. Highly recommended!--->
(photo from Google Images)
After class, I head to mail room and my day just gets better and better! My new issue of the fabulous fashion MAGAZINE "Seventeen" has arrived! Score! In the Media and Culture book, it's said that "Every magazine has it's own architecture. National Geographic is a Greek Revival Temple. TV guide is a fruit stand. The New Yorker is a men's hat store. The Atlantic is a church." (pg 300). That being said, I like to think that Seventeen is a clothing store with super helpful and friendly shop assistants of all shapes and sizes who know all sorts of beauty secrets and have exciting stories to share. After grabbing a bite to eat, I head back to my dorm and flip idly through the magazine. I have some time to kill before my next class, so as a media mastermind, I of course find something productive and media related to do...
<---Seventeen magazine is always so colorful and fun-looking! (photo from Google Images)
...and that something is watch my favorite television show The Office! Yes!!! I pop a DVD into my laptop (I own all the seasons on DVD) and laugh out loud to the funny antics the characters get into during another day at "the office". The show is unique because it "broke new ground by revamping the show's look and structure, shooting the program documentary style" (Media and Culture, page 144) which to me gives the show and characters a more realistic and relatable feel.
After I watch a couple episodes, I head off to my rhetoric class, where my teacher has us read a story from our "Rhetorical Reader" BOOK, which I bought in the beginning of the school year at the Champlain college bookstore. A statistic in the Media and Culture book states that "the average college student spends between $921 and $988 on texts books and supplies" (page 324) which kind of sucks for me financially wise. The song "Money Money Money" by Abba (which I heard last year while watching Mamma Mia), starts echoing in my head. Click the video below to hear what I'm hearing in my limbic brain right now.
After class, I eat some dinner with friends and head back to the dorm. I should be working on homework, but the INTERNET is so distracting! Youtube in particular is where I spend a lot of time watching cool and funny videos. "Youtube is one of the most popular Web sites, with more than twenty-five million hits a day." (Media and Culture pg 45). On the website, viewers are able to create an account and "subscribe" to different video channels, which sends them updates on when cool new videos are uploaded. My favorite subscription would have to be ViralVideoFilmSchool, in which the hilarious Brett vlogs about other videos on YouTube, giving funny commentary. Below is one of his video, all about the viral video trend "cats"
Another website that takes up a majority of my time would, of course, have to be Facebook, the social networking phenomenon. Its the easiest and most fun way to keep in touch with my friends from home as well as socialize with my friends here at Champlain. Its rare that someone doesn't own a facebook, even my friend Jackie who is technologically impaired got one at the end of last summer to keep in touch with everyone. I bet 99 % of Champlain students have a facebook, after all facebook "By 2008 had sixty million users" (media and culture pg 53), showing how popular the site truly is. It's definitely got that bandwagon appeal of "everyone has one" since anyone who's anyone usually does.
Many facebook users have recently changed their profile pictures to a nostalgic cartoons from their childhood to raise awareness for the fight against child abuse. Mine is a picture of Xmen evolution ----->
(photo from Google Images)
The rest of my day consists of socializing with friends in both face-to-face communication, texting and social media websites such as facebook. I watch some TV, perhaps a pop in a movie, skype some friends from back home. As I do homework, I "google" things, search wikipedia, get distracted by stumbleupon.com. After a long day as a media mastermind, I curl up in bed, read a chapter of a pleasure reading book and nod off to sleep with my cell phone under my pillow, the alarm set to wake me in the morning for another day as a MEDIA MASTERMIND.
Visual representation of my media mastermind-ness brought to you by Google Images!
