william and mary

next weekend the club basketball team is traveling to the college of william and mary for a tournament against georgetown, rutgers, and william and mary. as usual, i have absolutely no idea about how good any of the teams are. what i have noticed is that even though our team is usually way more talented than our opponents, we are never able to crush any of them. its ridiculous, some of our players have already played college basketball elsewhere, and some have played for high schools with high reputations in athletics, especially basketball, like dematha for example. we seem to have trouble working together as a team even though we have been practicing for almost a couple months now. there are some players that i must admit are hurting the team in games. im not going to name names but its obvious to everyone else who these individuals are. its not like they are bad players, but their styles don't work well with our team. im sure in time we will start playing properly but that might not be till next semester. anyway, for this next tournament, im not sure if i will be on the roster. i had a really bad game last weekend and i was late to a practice. so i have to bust my ass this week in practice to get onto the roster. i work hard outside of practice by playing pickup and lifting a lot so i just have to show what i got this week and then ill be able to see my friends that attend william and mary!

From above the rim,

Ersin

fin, the end, whatever you wanna call it

i just finished all four of my exams that occured in october. please hold on a minute while i celebrate...............................okay all done. now the only thing left to do in october is to write this english paper. plenty of other cool stuff has occured besides exams being over. recently there was an event called maryland madness, formerly midnight madness; and event which officially marks the beginning of the basketball season. all the teams and the players were introduced in a flashy light show with lots of dancing, cool music, and flaming acrobatics. no kidding i actually mean flaming; the gymkana team vaulted through and in one exception over a blazing ring of fire. it was spectacular. the evening was tipped off by the entrance of gary williams in his under armour-mobile/tank/armored vehicle. he literally drove onto the basketball court in this monstrous car with flashing lights, in a entrance of power. the scrimmages of the mens and womens basketball teams were not too impressive in my opinion as a pretty decent basketball player. im no division one player but im good enough to know when the game is being played correctly or not. hopefully they will pull it together by their first few games, or else my poll on my blog will tip in my favor ( the club bball team will have a higher win percentage than the varsity bball team). okay so i only mentioned one cool thing going on but im getting sleepy. its 12:20. so goodnight

from the top of the world

ersin "ersdaddy" levent

salary cap

im a huge football fan, particularly a fan of the washington redskins. given this, i absolutely hate the dallas cowboys. they suck, and so do the giants and eagles, but for this post im focusing my hatred on the cowboys. their stupid owner jerry jones has a has a pocket that is infinitely deep. and he has money in this pocket im referring to. he has picked up huge big name superstars in the NFL which cost loads of money and still seams to stay under the nfl's salary cap (more like the nfl's radar). he just acquired roy williams from the detroit lions, who is a freak athlete wide reciever who can catch anything thrown at him. his is a huge superstar and he is being added to the list with, tony romo, jason witten, terrell owens, roy williams (the safety), marion barber, zach thomas, pac man jones, and others that i can't remember who are all probowlers and demand to be paid lots of money because of their stellar performances over the recent years. there is now way that they are managing to stay under the salary cap. this is so ridiculous. with the roster the cowboy's have it should be impossible for them not to win the superbowl. they would actually have to try to lose in order to lose. unless of course they played the redskins (#1 team ever). now i get to be the fortune teller and predict that some sort of salary cap scandal is going to pop up in the near future about this. 

stay tuned 

Ersin 

GO SKINS!

a week or two in my future

its getting crazy. last weekend we had a basketball tournament up at princeton. it was the nicest campus i have ever seen, except for college park. we won only one out of the three games we played but it was still a lot of fun. i enjoyed getting a chance to play different teams, and the 6 hour commute was actually a lot of fun because i got to know the people on my team a lot better. now that im back i am thrown back into academics. i have an exam tonight at 7 for statistics, and one tomorrow afternoon for business management. im pretty stressed about it, not because i don't know what im doing, but because its the first exam for both of those classes. i really want to get off on the right foot this semester, so its essential that i get a B or and A. plus its tough because i have never taken an exam for either of my professors so i don't really know how they test. next weekend i want to go to the wake forest game, and i have another basketball game on sunday, but im also trying to go home for one night and do some laundry. thats going to be tough to work out but ill figure out a way to manage it all. and right after that crazy weekend i have my fourth and final exam of october on monday for MUET 220 better know as ethnomusicology, which i think will be my hardest exam. so as they say, shits bout to go down. im bracing myself so i hopefully won't collapse under the pressure. im sure you all have exams too, its about that time.

good luck

Ersin

Rhetorical Analysis 1 (the appeals)

I’m selecting the first YouTube clip. This clip is an advertisement for a new Volkswagen model.  The intended audience of this commercial is a younger audience. I say this because the car that gets smashed is a tricked out car of a young male character. Volkswagen is saying to all the young car owners in the world, that their new Volkswagen is better than whatever they are currently driving. Young people are always looking for the next trend or the next popular product, and by smashing what appears to be a cool car; Volkswagen is demonstrating that their car is more hip, trendy, and contemporary than other presumed "cool cars".  In addition the two Germans in the commercial are wearing contemporary clothing, with electronic/techno music playing in the background, and the German male in the advertisement references things that a young person could relate to. He says “drop it like its hot”, which is a popular line from the song “drop it like its hot” by a famous male rapper named Snoop Dog. Hip-hop and rap are generally associated with the younger generation, so this has a strong connection to people in their teens and in their twenties. Also, at the end of the commercial the German man makes a VW sign with his hands. Its hard to catch at first, so initially it looks like some kind of cool hand sign that is also associated with hip-hop, and the younger generation. 

            The strongest type of appeal in this commercial is Pathos. Pathos appeals to the emotions of the audience. Because the Volkswagen is portrayed as this hip, contemporary car, it makes the audience think that if they own that car, they too will appear hip and contemporary. There is good looking woman who crushes the young mans car because she prefers the Volkswagen. This appeals to young males, making them think that they will come off as more attractive to women if they drive that Volkswagen. Because the intended audience is a younger one, it is easier to connect with them through their sense of emotion. Generally younger people are more easily persuaded by what they see, and don’t think things through as well as older people, so a commercial like this, which challenges “coolness”, is extremely effective.

            There is also a little bit of ethos. Ethos has to do with credibility; in this case the credibility of what a company is promoting. The two Germans make the Volkswagen seem like it has some sort of “street” credibility. Again this refers back to how the company is making their product seem cool and trendy. In addition, the man says that the car is representing Deutschland (Germany), and a narrator comes is saying that the car is pre-tuned by German engineers. This gives the car even more credibility because Germany is known for making excellent cars, and has a history of high performance engineering, when it comes to vehicles of transportation. There isn't any Logos in this advertisement. Logos has to do with logic, facts, and reasoning, and none of this can be found in this advertisement

kimbo slice

last saturday night there was a big fight on tv. it was saturday night fights and the main event was the fight that kimbo slice was going to fight in. for those who don't know, kimbo slice is this huge scary african american man who has become famous for his success in street fights. he has many videos on youtube of himself fighting bare-fisted street fights for money. he usually crushes every opponent he faces and in some way disfigures their faces. this made the name kimbo slice more common than many professional cage fighters. due to this overwhelming popularity, UFC decided to sponsor kimbo slice so he is now a professional mixed martial arts cage fighter. back to last saturday...the fighter that kimbo was scheduled to fight was not allowed to fight due to some medical condition. kimbo was assigned to fight some random guy who was called up due to the particular situation. he didn't have to fight the new guy because kimbo did not agree to fight him originally so he had the option of opting out of the fight. but being the beast that he is kimbo he decided to give the fans what they wanted, a fight that he was almost guaranteed to win, and probably by a flashy knockout. the fight began and kimbo somehow got caught by a sucker punch that dazed him a little, and his opponent jumped all over him, and started wailing on him, forcing the referee to stop the fight. kimbo lost. i could not believe that someone as strong and scary as kimbo could lose, especially to some random guy. it was so disappointing because i waited all night for the fight and it only last 10 seconds, and kimbo lost. i suggest looking up his videos so you can see how incredible this guy is, and so you can understand how i came to believe that he is unbeatable. 

ersin

i still got the magic touch

as usual i was home again this weekend. no im not going to publicly complain about the downsides of off campus weekend work. im actually going to talk about my little go practice i had today. since i was not doing homework and i finished my work i decided to go to the driving range at the country club that i belong to. i usually go to the range to practice and work on my swing but today it was simply to see if i could still make contact with the ball. this is something that i usually would never say since im a 1 handicap which is pretty good (im trying to be humble) but since all i have been doing for the last month and a half is lifting, running, and playing basketball. lifting is so bad for golf because golf is a game of precision, touch, and feel, and lifting simply deals with using your muscles to the max. as i began pitching the ball around the club felt like a feather in my hand and i was hitting the ball really poorly. but to my surprise i started striking the ball so purely; i was hitting it long and strait. the club pro, who was actually giving a lesson used me as an example to the person he was teaching. i was so nervous because he didn't know that i hadn't played in a month and a half; the last time he saw me play was when i won the club championship.  but i knew, so i was literally shaking and praying that i would made a good swing. i made a great swing, under the circumstances, and it seemed to satisfy the example that the pro was trying to demonstrate. i only stayed for half an hour because all i was trying to do was to see if i could still play the game, which i could. this made my saturday so awesome in addition to other things i won't mention. 

only a slightly different note club basketball has a game tomorrow (thats sunday october 5th) at 12:30 pm at richie coliseum. any support would be greatly appreciated. 

CYA

Ersin

feeling the heat

college has just begun to get difficult (as of right now). the reason its getting so difficult is because i have so many things to manage and keep track of. I can't afford to slip up because in most classes i don't have the opportunity of being graded frequently like in highschool. this means that if i mess up, i won't have many chances to make up for it, where as in highschool i could literally make up for a mistake the next day. so in october alone i have 4 exams and 2 papers to tackle. so basically im feeling the heat right now. i have already completed one paper, but i now have to manage researching and completing our english paper while trying to find plenty of time to spend preparing for my exams. in the midst of all this there are the daily homework assignments, and in all of my classes i will be literally learning new material up to the last class before the exam. so i have to overlap studying old stuff, while trying to learn the new stuff. at the end of the day its all one massive headache, and it leaves me wondering when i will have time to chill out. Every time i feel like taking it easy i always remember all the crap i have to get done and then i can't really enjoy taking a break, and sometimes i don't take my break and i keep working. so i have discovered that the biggest change from highschool to college is that you have to be an expert at managing your time. i have to manage academics and club basketball with my free time. i never know when its truly appropriate to take breaks. it seems like i could always be studying something, especially music because i don't know anything about what im learning in that class. im honestly screwed in that class. all we have learned about is chinese, japanese, korean, and indian music. all asian words look alike. its insane, i can't tell which one of those first three im reading about. i have never seen so many k's x,y, and z's in a book. october is gonna suck, okay maybe not halloween.

cya in the library

ersin