What is a sellout?

As I was reading an article on one of the websites that I frequently visit a thought passed through my head. Why do people call artists or famous people sellouts? After this question popped up in my head I read some articles on the biggest sellouts ever. Almost every single place that I went to that was about sellouts was very bitter. Is the term sellout a bitter word? I would say it is, all that it is a person changing what they do. People interpret this change as a betrayal to their idea of what that individual was. That is my idea of why people use the word. The article I read was a little different they got the artist to comment on why he did what he did, and why he is not a sellout. Here is the article Sellout? The artists is Macklemore and a lot of his songs are unique and have some meaning behind them. Here is the full song that they were referring to in the article Wings. In his response to people calling him critics there was something that just struck me as our English class. What do you think it is that made me think this?

Myrtle Beach Half Marathon

 This past weekend I did another race, but unlike the previous weekend I did not have to eat twelve donuts and run right after, but there was an elephant at the start just sitting on the median of the road.Instead I had to run 13.1 miles. I know this sounds like a lot, but in reality it is not all that bad. Considering the fact that a full marathon is twice that much, and there are races that are 100 milers. I was pleasantly surprised with how well I ended up in doing. I think that when you are actually competing in a race with thousands of people surrounding you it puts you into a whole new mind set. Who knows maybe my body is pumping hormones or something differently than just a normal old practice run. Is it the fact that I don't want to get passed by some old fart or by the guy in jesus sandals or is there something more to it. Normally when I run I just run on the greenway by myself, so all that I have pushing me is myself. I normally end up in walking quiet a bit more than I do in a race. These past two races I have not walked during the whole race portion or if I could not help it. I honestly wonder what all goes into me and others into not walking. I believe for myself that it is a combination of I don't want to be shamed, I've worked too hard for this, and there's only one part I can walk and that is after the finish line. As you get closer to the finish line there are more and more people that are yelling and screaming and shaking there cowbells for the runners. If you walk this portion you will get heckled until you ran through that finish line. I wonder if this is similar to the way our english class is we cheer each other on right when we are close to the finish and the start, but we as individuals have to push ourselves for the middle section.

Here are my individual splits for each mile(there was two emergency bathroom pit stops see if you can figure out which miles those were on)

Here is a nice little map showing the route we ran and a nice graphic at the bottom

Here are the official results by gun time, I beat the guy ahead of me according to chip time.

The Krispy Kreme Challenge

I remember hearing from Lacy this week that she was encouraging us to share out of class experiences on our blog, so here I go. This past weekend at North Carolina State University there was the Krispy Kreme Challenge. The idea is that you run from the bell tower on campus to the krispy kreme store 2.5 miles away, eat twelve donuts and then run back to the tower. There were right around eight thousand people that participated in the ninth annual challenge. I do run regularly, but I have never tried to eat twelve donuts at one sitting the most I have ever eaten was six at one time. I did not know how to eat them besides just dip them in water to get the glaze off. While I was waiting at the start line people are talking about different stuff, and I end up in talking to a group of guys about random things. Finally we came upon the subject of how to eat them and the veteran said you have to eat them four at a time or there is no way that you will be able to put down that many donuts in one sitting. Once I flew through the first 2.5 miles and got to eat the donuts. I actually found the veteran and observed how he was eating them and I tried emulating him. Once I hit eight I was not feeling too well I was feeling nauseous  to put it simply. I was eating half of my last eight when I urgently needed to use this restroom, so I used this opportunity to dispose of my last part of donuts. I started running back and the first mile was not too bad but the second one I started to feel pretty bad, luckily I ended up in running with some guy similar in age. We helped to push each other to the very end and this really helped me to not stop and also pushed me to be better than I could be by myself. Once I crossed the finish line it was a huge relief and apparently everyone else thought so too. People were hurrying to bushes if they could make it while some were just puking up the donuts in the middle of the street. I assure you that I did not come to this point, but I was flirting with it. I believe that this can be related back to what we have been talking about english and learning. I think this is so because I was able to hear and observe what others were doing when they were eating the donuts and figure out which way would work for me the best. Next year I'm sure that I will do it in a completely different manner than I did this time. I should probably practice eating that many donuts before next time.

Genres of Participation

As I was looking back through my day book to see what I should blog about I found a piece that interested me. A couple weeks ago we were told to go pick a section of a much larger piece by Gee, I choose Genres of Participation because it had an intriguing title. He classified participation into different categories the two main ones were friendship-driven and interest driven. Interest driven helps to describe group's like the geeks, musicians, and the jocks. While friendship driven is more what youth do with their friends. Which one do think is more prevalent in today's youth? If you guessed friendship driven then you were right because a lot of the activities that youth do are with each other and because of each other. Would you want to go to some party without your friends? Wouldn't you be more likely to try something with a friend? I wonder as we as youth transition into a more independent lifestyle and professional do we become more interest driven or friendship driven. I argue that for the career oriented person it is defiantly more interest driven, as you start to join clubs with the same interest and making connections within that given interest. I am not saying that friendship driven is still not heavily prevalent , but that it is more balanced out by interest driven than before in one's youth.