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Analysis of October's Storm by Reign of Kindo
21:59 May 11 2010
Times Read: 527








The song October's Storm is using the storm as an analogy as to how you should deal with tragedy, heartbreak, or just rough times in general. The song starts off at a moderately fast tempo with just piano and soft percussion. The pianist plays a melody that brings about the feeling of melancholy while the drummer plays softly on just the ride cymbal and the rim of the snare. The vocalist then comes in singing quite morosely. This portion of the song is in the past though it's not too far in the past. In relation the analogy this is when you have just experienced a upheaval in life. When a lot seems like it's going wrong. The vocalist is the victim, though he is telling the story to an third party, while the trees are the consul. “I swung beneath the battered trees/The sunlight kissed and greeted me/It broke right through the clouded skies above/ Adorned the trees with shining love/” At this point the vocalist has just come upon the battered trees seeking consul as to how he should deal with it. The trees, being another person, have experienced this before. Their consul was the sun. The sun “adorned the trees with shining love/”

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“ Veils of doubt and shadows fled my eyes/” At this juncture the melody changes. The song becomes heavier with the guitars and bass coming in unison with the piano as the drummer plays a darker rhythm on the toms. This combined with the words “doubt” and “shadows” create a vision of the trees taking the vocalist back in time to when they experienced their tragedy. Those words are the vocalist trusting in the trees to help him safely through the rough times. This transitional period leads to a short break. A guitar comes in with a mini solo combined with the drummer playing a snare rhythm to signify the approaching storm.

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The song becomes heavy again as the storm arrives. The piano, guitar, and bass are playing inter-connecting parts that bring about an image of swirling wind and flashing skies. The drummer brings the thunder and lightening into the mix with a cohesive rhythm on the ride, snare, bass, and hi-hat. This part of the song is the trees relating to the vocalist what they had to go through when they faced their trials. “The saddest looking trees/ Broken and bruised in the fury of October's storm Stripped of their majesty/” “The saddest look trees” are the consuls to the young man in the middle of his crisis. The trees are being beaten around by their plight, the storm, so much that they don't even look like trees, their “majesty” has been taken away as they are left “broken and bruised” by what's happened to them. The song keeps this rhythm as the consuls take him to another's life problem. “The storm came in the night/ It crippled this town, unannounced and unmercifully bawling/ tears of wet snow” The crippled town is just another case of a “broken and bruised” person who's trying to fight through the haunting night.

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Here there is a pause in the ferocity of the storm. The drummer begins to plays on the ride cymbal and the rim of the snare like the beginning. The consul, the trees, are essentially telling the vocalist that he must leave his plight behind him in the past. That he must move on though no one was there for him. “ Though the trees cried through the night/ There was none to cure their plight/” The trees like the vocalist cried and bawled through the night. They couldn't find a soul to help them through the plight that was their crisis. When he says, “And it seemed their better days/ Would behind them, ever stay”, he is saying that though they, the trees, thought that the everything was going to hell in a hand basket and that they would never again be able to live like they once were they were wrong.

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Shortly after these words are sung the song goes into the bridge. The bridge has no lyrics other than the vocalist singing “oh”. However this part of the song is the vocalist's revelation that what has been told to him is going to help him. There's another guitar mini guitar solo though the part is more uplifting and not so melancholic. The drummer instead of playing the snare part like he did before is playing a rhythm that's a cross between the original dark tom part and something new.

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The “storm” resumes as the music returns to the dark theme they're portraying. The scene flashes forward to the not so distant past as the vocalist is again coming to the scene when he found the swing and the battered trees. This is a repainting of the scene that was shown to you in the beginning. “On that clouded day/ Years had since passed since the fury of October's storm/ When I found that old swing/” The first time this scene is painted you don't get much farther than the sun shining down upon him. And the first time through the complete rhythm you again don't get all that far into it until the tempo picks up and the vocalist states, “They were standing high above/ The sunlight came down and revealed to my eyes such a wonder / they were bursting with life/” This is the turning point in the song, this is where the vocalist begins to get his point across to his charge. The trees are bursting with life and they have endured.

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The sun shines down upon him and reveals that the trees are full of life. They've left what's happened to them behind and are bursting with energy and vigor. The October Storm they endured is a thing of the past. “ No matter what storms you've seen/ No matter the broken dreams/ you've yet to see mend/ Consider the the battered trees/ Their leaves dancing in the breeze/ Recalling no memory of October's storm/” Don't give up, keep fighting for your happiness because the storm won't last forever. It will pass and like the trees you need to be resilient and forgetful of what has happened.

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The lesson is stated one last time at the end of the song as if the person the vocalist helped out is then telling us, the listener, that we must remain strong through our storm. That we may think during the storm that what we're dealing with won't pass, but it will and we will move on. “ Though the trees cried through the night/ There was none to cure their plight/ And it seemed their better days/ Would behind them, ever stay” These lyrics are the only lyrical movement that's repeated throughout the song's course meaning the author wants you to remember these words.



Works Cited

Secchiaroli, Joseph. Padin, Steven. Sciandra, Kelly. Carroll, Michael. Jarvis, Jeffery. “October's Storm.” Rhythm, Chord, And Melody. Candyrat Records. 2010

“The tyranny of taxing sin” vs. “Tax liquid candy”
08:38 May 10 2010
Times Read: 530

Two articles about taxing soda pop. Which one is better conceived, more conclusive, and more convincing. The first of the two articles, “The tyranny of taxing sin”, is not written as well as the second, “Tax liquid candy”. The first article is a slanderous piece with pathos written all over it. Though written better, the second is lacking. More cleverly composed than the first, at just over 350 words it is lacking substance.

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The first article relies upon primarily pathological appeals otherwise known as pathos. Pathos are when an author uses emotional appeals to try and convince the reader to side with their argument. Other types of appeal are logos, appeals that appeal to your logical senses, and ethos, appeals that appeal to your ethical values. These pathos are used to skillfully disguise the lack of hard factual evidence in the piece. By just the title one can discern that the author intends to convince you through you assumed anger at the then proposed soda tax and the proposed in crease of alcohol/tobacco taxes. This is demonstrated when in paragraph one, sentence two, he states, “The US Senate is currently considering a soda tax to help pay for the healthcare reform”(Fleenor 9). The reason this is a pathos because many people are opposed to not only the healthcare reform but the soda tax itself. Fleenor intends to sway you into his way of thinking by taking advantage of many of those who oppose the proposed tax. More evidence is located in the Christian Science Monitor when in the same paragraph he says, “Nationwide, Democrats and Republicans have proposed higher taxes on alcohol and especially tobacco.”

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This sentence leads to another example of pathos. By mentioning both the Democratic and Republican parties the author brings in the conversation of politics in which many are strongly opinionated. By doing this the author hopes to bring to his side more readers by attacking opposing parties. Later on Fleenor uses pathos again, “Even President Obama-a man known to have indulged an occasional smoke himself-couldn't resist the temptation to ally himself with the nannies and grab some cash to fund his pet programs.” (9). This rather lengthy sentence will spark the fires of controversy in many eyes. By mentioning both President Obama and his many programs the author can create debate in the more mature members of the US households. Many of Obama's programs/agendas are very controversial in some people's minds as is the outspoken President himself. Not only does he use the mentioning of Obama to cause controversy but the way he words that sentence is in an attempt to ally himself against Obama which will grab the attention of those who are opposed to Obama.

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A third instance of pathos is found when the author, in paragraph two, states, “...because they think the proper role of the state is to scold the people in the same way a nanny scolds children. Don't touch that chocolate”(9). This sentence is structured so that one is sent careening back to their childhood days when they were often scolded for eating chocolate and other sweets before dinner. This puts the state in the adult caretaker role and the citizen in the childish-can’t-take-care-of-themselves role. This is what the author intends you to feel and it is his main “supporting” point. This point is restated later on when in his final paragraph he says, “What a shame when if the Statue of Liberty no longer held up a torch of liberty but instead a ruler to whack citizens across the knuckles when they reach for a treat.”(9)

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Yet another example of pathos is revealed in paragraph three, “it's their love of money. They want to spend more, and they'll take whoever's money is easiest to grab.”(9). This wording is fairly easy to assess. No matter who you are money is either an issue or it's very important to you. By merely stating that they're out to get your money he elicits powerful emotions. The hole in these words is that to pay the tax you have to actually buy soda. Three good things come from not buying soda: You are saving the money that would have gone to the soda, you're not paying the proposed soda tax, and you are going to be a healthier human being overall.

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While the use of pathos is the most appealing of the three paths of appeal, the lack of factual evidence to support the thesis prevents this article from attaining the status of the better of the two articles. The thesis, “To maintain fairness, and protect minorities, society should rely on broad-based levies on income, property, and sales.”(9), has no figures or sensible ideology to support the claim. The rather weak support, given shortly after the thesis, is stated, “All who benefit form government services would pay for them.”(9) This single case of support does not show how the income, property and sales taxes could support the healthcare reform when it is currently not enough to support I unless a large increase on those taxes is enacted.

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In comparison to the first article the second article relies upon a mixture of primarily logos with a light sprinkling of pathos. Factor in his”factual evidence” and you have a recipe for a a convincing piece of writing. A quarrel found with this piece is it's lack of length. At only 369 words it's a rather short read.

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His first sampling of logos appears in his opening paragraph. “Soda and other sugary soft drinks are the only beverage or food that has been shown to increase the risk of obesity. And obesity, in turn, promotes heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and other expensive-to-treat diseases.”(Jacobson, 8A). While this statement is a presenting of factual evidence it's also logos. The reasoning behind this is simple. He's using the fact that soda lead to obesity to convince you not to drink it. It's only logical not to drink soda or you'll likely get other diseases.

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A second logos provided by Jacobson appears in the third paragraph of his article. “Unlike payroll or income taxes, or a new tax on employer-paid health benefits, a soda tax would itself promote health and reduce medical costs.”(8A). This one is linked to the first in the fact that it's a logos and it's telling you that don't drink soda look what will happen. The point in this sentence is that the soda tax “promote health and reduce medical costs.” As most Americans are drowning in medical debt and are rather unhealthy this sentence is appealing. Who wouldn't want to reduce their medical costs? Don't drink soda the author says and that will happen.

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Now in this article the author uses what could be classified as factual evidence, that is evidence that presents you with facts not opinions. The problem with the author's factual evidence is that quite a bit is not fact. It's speculation which is presented in such a way that it resembles fact. The first case of this is when the author says in paragraph two, “A tax, depending on its size, would decrease consumption of a disease-promoting drink by 1%-15%.”(8A). The reason that this is a speculation and not a fact is that it is talking about the future. It is talking about that which is not known. The way it's presented one could argue that it looks like a fact, but it is indeed not.

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A second speculation appears in the same paragraph. “Moreover, taxes of once cent per 12-ounce can or one cent per ounce would raise between $15 billion and $160 billion over 10 years...”(8A). Again this one looks like fact and it could indeed be fact had he actually calculated the average US soda consumption multiplied by the tax per can/ounce while factoring in the decrease. However, the reason that one could see straight through this sentence is the rather large gap between the two numbers. The distance of $145 billion is a rather large speculation. Again placing such numbers in an article makes it appear like fact, but one must analyze to realize that this is not so.

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Now the author does filter in some factual evidence with his speculations. While these don't include any figures they still present quite a case. “Americans spend more than $100 billion a year on direct medical costs associated with overweight and obesity,...”(8A) This figure does not need to be speculated, this figure is fact. All one has to do is surf the internet until they find a respectable site that has the figures on it. Or with the knowledge that he as a executive director of a consumer group might already possess he can state this with firm belief that it is correct.

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Why is this second article better than the first? Isn't length better? No, and here’s the reason why: while the first article presents a convincing argument he lacks any factual evidence that will lead me to believe in his argument. Pathos is a very powerful tool when arguing a case, but it does not give enough evidence to solidify his case. The second article provides not just logos, but strong speculations presented to look like fact and some actual cases of fact. That is what makes the second article better than the first.



MLA Works Cited



Fleenor, Patrick. "The tyranny of taxing 'sin'." Christian Science Monitor 14 May 2009, N.A.: 9. Print.

Jacobson, Michael F. "Tax 'liquid candy'." USA Today 12 Jun 2009, N.A.: News, 8A. Print.