While the reading did look intimidating, I, unlike my peers, thought the reading was very interesting. Although I venture that most if not all of the people in class did not read every word of the reading, I hope you guys don't do the same with my blog post and stop reading it after two sentences. The first thing I learned from the reading was that we form an identity through rhetoric. I never really thought about an identity as something we can change, but more of as something that is definite and unchanging. I also thought the part that stated that many of the questions we ask when we first meet people are asked to figure out their identity and stereotype them was very intriguing and for the most part true.

I like the definition of "essence" as some part of us that makes us who we are, that if removed would change our identity. I thought this to be a great definition and realized that my essence is flying. If you were to remove the fact that I have been flying for about one third of my life that would completely change who I am.

I could not help but laugh and laugh when I came to the paragraph about becoming an NBA center and sex changes. The author stated "However much I wanted to be an NBA center, no matter how hard I work, if extraordinary height is not in my DNA, my dream is doomed." I couldn't help but think that this author obviously has never seen the South Park episode about Stan getting plastic surgery and becoming a tall black man. Then, when I continued to read and the passage mentioned sex changes I thought about Mr. Garrison or should I say Mrs. Garrison and all the funny episodes of South Park that go along with sex changes. The coincidence was just too funny that they put these two examples in the same paragraph.

"Because we are so wary of advertisers' claims and savvy about their ploys, most of us have become adept at using rhetoric to protect ourselves against them." I thought this was a very insightful observation. The fact that the stupid "Head-on" commercials repeat the name of the product 30 billion times is exactly why I will never buy their product even if it works great. I don't want to fall prey to the advertiser's brainwashing.

In closing I hope people did read my blog, and comment on it. I'm going to try to make these things more lively as I go, because let's face it, we're all in this together. Next time someone asks me who I am, I'm not going to say Jason Reinhart, Im going to say "I'm a nineteen yeear old aviator majoring in Professional Flight Technology at Purdue University, who was born and raised in Fort Wayne, IN (represent) likes stand-up comedy and takes life one day at a time."