The kerb
It is my favorite place on the drag. Kerbey Lane. I absolutely love it. Why? A few reasons. 1. The food 2. the atmosphere 3. the hours. I will further explain each of these reasons.
Okay.. so the food is amazing. I haven’t tried it all but I have had enough to know that I like most of their food. To start, their queso is delicious. I had never actually had queso before I came to Austin… actually I may have but usually people call it cheeze dip where I’m from cause queso is Spanish for cheese and when people call it queso they are implying that there is something Mexican about it and there is nothing that Mexican about kerbey lane queso…. none the less, its delicious. Next comes the chipotle cream pasta. It is a spicy Mexican and Italian and mix. I always order it with grilled chicken because it is probably the best thing they have at Kerbey… in my opinion anyway. Another item I really enjoy is the veggie fajita panini. It is filled with grilled onions, bell peppers, tomatoes, mushrooms and topped with a spicy mayonnaise sauce. Since I love the chicken so much I usually ask them to add it in. It makes the already great dish phenomenal. It also comes with a salad, cesar or house, which makes it more filling. I also really like Kerbey Lane’s breakfast menu. I won’t go into detail but the breakfast tacos, and the pancakes are superb. Kerbey also has really good deserts. They have conventional ones like brownie with ice cream and also have other non-traditional ones like vegan chocolate cheesecake. I think it is really cool how their menu offers a variety of food that will satisfy lots of different types of people. From meat lovers to vegetarians to vegans.
The second reason I love Kerbey Lane is because of the atmosphere in the restaurant. When you walk in, you immediately feel relaxed. The waiters wear pretty much whatever they want so you never feel pressured to have a certain attire. You also never feel the need to present yourself in a certain way. You can go in pajamas if you want and no one will stare.
The third reason I love kerbey lane is because it is open 24 hours 7 days a week. If I am studying late and want to take a break… I know that kerbey lane is open and ready for my business. Another great thing is that they are located so close to campus so I don’t need a car to go.
These are the reasons I love kerbey lane. Although sometimes it is infested with drunks and sometimes has bad service these things overpower all of that making it my favorite restaurant on the drag.
Visual Arguments
So in our last class we talked a little bit about visual arguments. About how important they are and the messages they convey. As for the Vogue cover with Lebron and Gisele, I found it hilarious. I guess I thought it was so funny because I would have never ever thought of comparing it to King Kong. I think that people who see racists arguments in pictures like that one are just looking for trouble where there is none. Once she mentioned it I did see the resemblance but if that comparison hadn’t been made, I would have never imagined it. Now I realize how big of a role visual rhetoric has played in feeding eating disorders in girls like Polly and Shelly from the thin documentary. I ask myself what the argument is of the picture of the skinny model wearing the low cut jeans really is. Buy these jeans? Maybe… maybe that is their intention but I think people get a different message. I was watching make me a super model a few days ago, it was the marathon, and it was the episode where the measured their waists and their fat. It was horrific. I thought about the message it was sending out to teenage girls and even boys. I thought about the amount of power the producers have on that show, and I wondered if they realized how much they influence young people. I think that anorexia and bulemia are kept alive by societies demand for beauty. I am really enjoying a cooks tour. I think this man is pretty blessed. I have always admired people who have a way with words. People who have the ability to make others understand what they are thinking and feeling. As I read his book, I feel like I am eating Anthony Bourdain’s food. I feel as though I am standing next to him in a club in Russia watching people beat the living hell out of each other. Not only is he great at describing things, his sarcasm and personality makes the book an even better read. He has a very noticeable personality and it comes alive through the pages of his book. Wow… I though I had saved this entry and when i went to see if I could read it on the actual website it said there was an error and it deleted the whole thing. Thank god for that back button. I think this book is especially interesting because it shows the cultural differences. From the way the portugese butchered the pig, to the meat markets in Morocco, it is evident that American’s cook things handle food very differently. It is cool though, that even as a celebrity chef, he isn’t phased by all of it. I think that most people would be grossed out if they walked along the street and saw a meat market with piles of goat heads. If they had seen the carcasses with flies, they would have run away… So I think that is why he stands out as a great chef. He is willing to go to the other side of the world to get a taste of the different cultures. Literally. And talk about his power of making gross stuff sound delicious. He definitely has skills, both in cooking and writing.
Causal Arguments
Causal arguments… I learned about this in my government class. In our first test we had to write a couple of short answer responses and we had to determine what kind of argument each one was. The only one I remember was that the case of Brown vs. Board of Education let to the overturn of Plessy vs. Ferguson. The courts ruled that segregation was wrong because it denied blacks and whites equal opportunities and because it caused people to feel inferior. Anyway.. I just remembered that when I read the title of the chapter. I also remembered that issue of national geographic. My biology teacher showed it to us in class when I was a freshman in high school. According to NG, we are gaining weight because we have increased the portions of our food. They specified on what those sizes where supposed to be: A steak is supposed to be the size of a one card from a deck of cards (lengthwise), the amount of pasta you eat should be about the size of your fist, if you eat cheese with your meal it should be no bigger than a domino, and if you like to butter your roll you should only use about a die (dice). Crazy huh… I know my steak is a lot bigger than that. And my butter? I do put about a die of butter on my roll… each time i take a bite 
That argument was effective because I still remember that magazine article to this day (especially when I eat pasta). The article claimed that people were getting fat. They used an A causes B which causes C type of argument: we are eating bigger portions, therefore consuming more calories, therefore getting fatter. It was an effective article because it was informative, eye opening and that picture they used on the cover was scary. That woman scared me into eating smaller portions. I realized that there are causal arguments everywhere. The obesity epidemic sure likes to use them. The crazy Roth lady likes to use them as well, and even though I don’t agree with all of her methods, she did get her point across when she talked about little obese kids and how parents are responsible for their health. Every time I read a chapter from EaA I remember things that relate to it or I come across them afterwards… It’s a good read because not only does it make me relate stuff, it teaches me how to write… in this case, causal arguments.
group assignment..
Claim- All flesh is grass. In other words grass is a primary producer and it is , or at least should be, the main food source for most of the animals we consume today. So in one way or another, even though we maybe eating chicken, we are still eating grass.
Grounds- Pollan talks about the different food sources these farm animals have. He talks about the process chickens go about in eating. First they “… [nibble] on the short cattle-clipped grasses they like best, [then] the chickens [apply] a few thousand pounds of nitrogen to pasture- and produce several thousand uncommonly rich and tasty eggs.”
Whole Foods..
So I visited Whole Foods Market this weekend. I’ve got to say, that place can really stir up my appetite. It is also kinda expensive so that was a waste. Anyway, I walked around the whole store, read labels, checked prices, and admired the food. Whoever designs the displays is a genius. Who knew plain red apples could look so enticing. I think the display plays a huge role in persuading the customer to buy the products. Everything is stacked so neatly and the whole store is just so organized, that it is just impossible not to want to buy something. Another thing Whole Foods uses to lure customers into the trap (and I don’t know why I call it trap… but maybe it’s cause I’m used to paying .89 cents for celery instead of 3 dollars) is a jab at their heart. Well not literally but they rely on pathos as a method of persuasion. As I was walking around the produce section I saw that above the produce, they had little biographies of the farmers who grew the produce. There was one that talked about a couple who started making vegetables in their back yard. They said that they were just doing it as a hobby but apparently everyone liked their vegetables and they have been in business ever since. It was a cute little story that made me want to pay those three dollars for the celery. I also noticed that Whole Foods really likes to advertise the whole “organic” thing. I read one label that actually gave the definition of organic. I didn’t write it down but I do remember it saying stuff about their products being good for the earth. That’s where the logos lied. It’s kinda like “why would you buy something that is harmful to our beautiful planet?” Another way Whole Foods sells it’s products is through their friendly staff. They are all really friendly and happy and it actually seems as though they are concerned about your well being. It looks like they will go out of their way to make a customer happy, which is how it should be. My mother used to have a jewelry store where I worked since I was about twelve, and I really learned the significance of treating the customer with care. I went to their website to see if I could find some useful information and one of their motto’s was “Our Customers. They are our most important stakeholders in our business and the lifeblood of our business. Only by satisfying our customers first do we have the opportunity to satisfy the needs of our other stakeholders.” Like with everything, Whole Foods comes with a few not so awesome qualities. They had a few of those foods with the health claims. And if my memory serves correct, we decided in class that foods that make health claims aren’t exactly healthy. Although I don’t think I saw this at the actual store, I was reading up on the company online and it talked about all of the different stores all over the world. They have something like 280 stores or something. Well that was pretty impressive. It definitely establishes major ethos. I believe that Whole Foods is pretty much saying “Hey, our food is healthy, you want to be healthy, and its good for the planet. So be a good person and shop at our store today.” Although I don’t agree with all of their methods.. they’ve done a pretty good job of convincing me to shop there. And I think i hear that cheddar potato soup calling my name…
First blog…
So I started reading the book for Rhetoric. When I first bought it, I thought it was going to be boring but to my surprise, it was actually pretty interesting. The first chapter was pretty much an introduction to the course.. or to argumentative writing anyway. It talked about arguments in ways I had never thought of before. I learned about arguments that simply inform, like a hurricane shelter sign along the street. Although it doesn’t seem like it does much arguing, the mere fact that it is saying that there is a hurricane shelter up ahead is an argument in itself. Anyway, I went to Houston this weekend to visit my boyfriend and took me on a tour of his school. He goes to the University of St. Thomas so the tour lasted like 10 minutes but on the way he showed me something really interesting. The school is designed so that their chapel is on one end and the library is on the other. Between these two poles are the classrooms. The chapel represents faith, and religion, while the library represents knowledge and science . St. Thomas designed the school layout this way as an argument stating that everything the students learn is in between those two structures so that they can learn with the help of science and faith. The two are meant to go hand in hand and compliment each other. Because it is a private Catholic school people tend to think that it is geared around religion but in building the school that way, they made sure to explain their ideas of teaching in a mixed environment. This weekend I also saw a really funny T.V. commercial on You Tube. It wasn’t really meant to be funny but I couldn’t help and laugh at how ridiculous it was. O.K. so this girl chef is cooking in a restaurant and she is saying how she is probably going to become head chef, and how she got engaged but she won’t make it to the wedding cause she is about to be in a terrible “accident”… then she starts to pick up a big ass pot of boiling stuff while she says that she should have cleaned up the grease that was on the floor so it really wasn’t an accident… and as she says that she slips and spills all of the boiling soup on her face and then the camera zooms in on her face and you see her all burned up. The screen then goes black and these words come out that tell the audience to help prevent accidents and to visit their website. The reason I found it hilarious was because they tried using pathos to convey a message, but it was totally pointless. I mean how am I supposed to stop her from spilling grease and then slipping on it later. The commercial was so exaggerated and corny. It really had no logos or ethos either. It was pretty funny though.. So if they were trying to make me laugh, the sure did accomplish their goal. I almost peed my pants. I saw lots of other things that tied into the reading but those two were definitely the most interesting.
