Monday, September 29, 2008

Wordle.net

Just discovered this site by going blog-to-blog over lunch. You enter text, Wordle.net arranges it graphically. You have some control of the distribution, font, and color scheme. The size of each word is determined by its relative frequency within the overall text. Below are three ones I did up by copying and pasting the text of the McCain-Obama debate...

First attempt, totally random:



Tried playing with color here:



Added 200 or so iterations of the word "debate" to get it prominent:

Sunday, September 28, 2008

in/nuendo delicto & Watchmen (these items unrelated)

I'm up at school, responding to student work. Last time I mentioned them, it was at the beginning of the semester. I haven't taken time to note that there are some promising writers in class. Some generally-creative minds, as well. Hooray :-)

Yesterday Kate and I took a break from the insanity-that-is-our-current-schedule and watched the first couple episodes of The Tudors. At one point, the Duke of Buckingham walks in on a knight having sex with his (that is, Buckingham's) daughter (the idea that "his daughter" means "his property" plays out pretty strongly here). He later confronts King Henry VIII, saying he caught the man "in flagrante delicto." Now, we've all heard that phrase. I'm not bothering to look it up in the OED right now, but I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that "flagrante" is related to the modern "flagrant." In which case, I have to ask-

Is there an innuendo delicto? A subtle delicto? I mean, can you catch someone in the sex act, but they're kinda pretending that it's not happening (I'm picturing the awkwardness of co-ed dorms and roommates coming home early here)? And to the other end, can you have flagrantissimo delicto? Riding down Main Street, USA on a unicycle while making love?

---

In totally unrelated news, but posted here to avoid posting again: the Watchmen movie is on the way. I feel great trepidation, don't think the movie can in any way, shape, or form approach the movie. Shot-by-shot recreation of scenes does not necessarily mean that the film will be faithful to the comic. Potentially worse, especially for someone who likes video games, is the video game spinoff that's being worked on. With that in mind, however, there is hope.

Once upon a time, there was a game that essentially had a "Press x to think introspectively on your life" command. I'm thinking of Planescape: Torment. Not the best-selling game ever, but one of the most philosophically-complex games I've ever played. Within the first few minutes of playing, you're confronted by a quasi-Buddhist character telling you the world is illusory. Within twenty, you're given the option to convince another character that it's OK to die...because that person is losing his faith, and his religion posits death as a good thing, a passage to a better world. I really, really doubt that the the Watchmen game would try for that angle, but there's always the possibility.

Of course, then we'd end up with a comic book that pushes the boundaries of what a comic book can do, a video game that pushes the boundaries of what a video game can say/mean, and a movie that turns out to be the lesser/least product. Ironic, no?

Also, instead of a movie, an HBO/Showtime miniseries would rock. Webisodes/blog entries/etc to mirror the non-comic interludes. A multimedia experience that could (finally) capture the spirit of the original

Friday, September 26, 2008

ENGL235, here's the powerpoint of art from Wednesday

Or not, since I can't upload a PowerPoint presentation [nor Impress presentation (that's the OpenOffice version, for those of you wondering) nor PDF file].

Sigh.

Here's the individual images - click each for a larger version. My apologies for such a long entry... One of these days I'll figure out Flickr or somesuch service... Extra credit (seriously... 1% on final grade) for those who can track down title/artist for each of the non-snapshot works (that means everything but the Xipe Totec image, the shot of Buckingham Fountain, the totally white image, the portrait of Neil Armstrong, the lolcat, the Kyle Field shot, and the elephants holding trunks)


ENGL235 - your reading for Monday

Assorted poems (our topic will be the Turn)

8 haiku by Basho, 3 translations of each (I prefer the Blyth, but read any or all)
Christina Rossetti - "Monna Innominata"
Walt Whitman - "Song of Myself" (read at least the first three sections)
Robert Frost - "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"
H.D. - Helen
H.D. - selections from The Walls Do Not Fall (specifically poems 6, 8, and 10) <-- this one is a PDF file Anne Sexton - "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"

Thursday, September 25, 2008

The Fairly Big News Post

In case you're wondering why I haven't gotten to updating the videos from Mic Check...

Aside from the fact that it takes an inordinately long amount of time to render the video (because of the way the software is set up here, I need two programs to convert from the camcorder files to the nice, small ones that can be streamed online)...

Kate has a defense date! In about two weeks, you can start sending mail to Dr. and Mr. Stumpo :-)

We're selling the house. As in doing the preliminary paperwork today, with a closing date in early November. Three weeks on the market, baby. Of course, now I have to find a place to live for a month while Kate's up in New Hampshire. Working on that in my free time, so Arts & Crafts, this blog, and various other things have slowed to a crawl.

Hopefully more pertinent/artsy posts in the next few days.

Sunday, September 21, 2008

The plural of "anecdote" is not "data"

Super-extra-gold-star-of-the-day goes to Empress in Yellow over at Kotaku, a gaming site, for responding to this:

haydenaurian at 03:12 PM on 09/20/08

The last time I was online playing XBOX360 there was a woman playing online with us and nobody in the room called her a "cunt", "bitch" or anything else. So this claim of widespread sexism in gaming is about half bullshit. If anything, the ones claiming sexism and talkin shit about men might just have some sexist issues themselves.

with this:

EmpressInYellow at 03:22 PM on 09/20/08 *

@haydenaurian: The plural of "anecdote" is not "data".

I love all of the defensiveness here, too. "Well, -I- don't behave in a misogynist fashion, so clearly it never happens!" or "How dare this article claim that all male gamers are misogynists?" (Protip: It doesn't).

Here's a hint: Saying, "Hey, there are still some deeply-entrenched misogynist attitudes in certain sectors of the gaming industry" does not mean that you, personally, are being called a misogynist. It does not mean that your hobby is being threatened. It is not making a value judgment about you as a person. This kind of knee-jerk reaction that occurs ANY TIME some potentially controversial subject is discussed RE: the gaming industry is exactly the sort of nonsense that ends up helping to -perpetuate- these stereotypes.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Mic Check Presents: Cam

One poem by Cam




Tomorrow: three by me! Maybe...it's already my blog, and news about Arts & Crafts will begin spilling out soon. I will probably instead post the two impromptu guests so as to give you Steve on Friday.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Mic Check Presents: Tina B

Three clips from Houston's Tina B today:









Tomorrow: Cam!

Monday, September 15, 2008

Mic Check Presents: Taye Swift

Sorry for the weekend delay. We now return to our regularly scheduled videos of performances from the Goodbye-Stephen-Sargent show.

Incidentally, I was at Mic Check, kindasorta, last night. It got rolled into a coming out party for Aggiewire.com, a new online news source in town. I'm going on the record to say that Mic Check is not dead with the loss of Steve. Will the nature of the game change up a bit? Naturally. But spoken word in BCS is alive and well. No video, unfortunately.

And now, a couple of NSFW pieces from Taye Swift:

It's Just Life



Tryin' to get y'all to feel that




Tomorrow: Tina B.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Of Anticipation and Assholes

Dear Bryan, Texas:

Just because Hurricane Ike is coming in does not mean that you suddenly get to

A) cut in front of other cars at the gas pump
B) cut in front of other people at the grocery store
C) then try to cut in front of yet another person when you realize that your previous cut was actually moving slower - that's called short-term karma

Sincerely,
JeFF

p.s. If you're only buying beer, lose double the points.

p.p.s. This item found by jumping blog to blog to blog (beginning with my new sidebar buddy - Seven Kitchens), and it takes the cake on assholery.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Mic Check Presents: Jennifer

Kids in Sudan:




As with all the videos in this series, recorded at the farewell-to-Stephen-Sargent Mic Check, September 8, 2008.

Things that didn't die lately

Good: The bird trapped in the parking garage stairwell yesterday. Why an architect would design a parking garage with glass-window-lined stairwells in Texas, where the temperature averages 150 bajillion degrees in the sun, I'll never know. Neither will this grackle, who had entered at some point and was jumping at the windows, very confused as to why it couldn't just fly away. I held a door open for a few minutes to no avail, finally wedging it open it my shoe, then chasing the grackle (a difficult process, since it felt the best way to escape me would be through that big open space in front of it - which of course was beyond the window). It finally got out. My apologies to the person whose car has victory poop on it (the grackle's, not mine).

Not-so-good: Kim Jong Il. The morality of this pronouncement to be discussed at a later time.

Very, very good: Everybody and everything on the planet.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Mic Check presents: Buck Hogue

From the September 6 Farewell to Stephen Sargent show - two poems by Buck(Buck)(buck)...

Contains graphic language (damn right, as the crowd would put it)...







Tomorrow: Jennifer

If you wish you were colorblind

let me know. I'm messing with the layout of the blog a bit, trying out different orders of info on the sidebar (I prefer having the "subscribe to this blog" kind of stuff at the bottom, but would anyone actually click it there?), changing the color scheme to match my website better. Unfortunately, color is not my design strong suit. I can do physical placement/layout all right. Font choice in a chapbook is not an issue for me. But I'm not sure which combination of colors will please, and which will cause the burning remains of my readers' eyes to fall out of their heads.

Help?

Monday, September 8, 2008

Mic Check Rocked

That's all that I can really say about it. Soul Everlived rocked, funked, and generally grooved from 8-930 or so. People danced. Some tried to dance and failed, but had a great time anyway (*cough* me *cough*). Ten minute break. The poets came up one by one, and while each put her or his own style out there, each undoubtedly owned the stage for the duration of his or her performance.

The shout-outs (in order): Buck Hogue, Jennifer, Taye Swift, Tina B., Cam, me, a new poet that Steve introduced but I didn't get her name, Chris Diaz, Steve, Charity, everybody who adlibbed.

Chris Diaz and Christopher Call are going to team up to host Mic Check - I believe the arrangement is that Chris D will run it most weekends, with Chris C helping out for slams and whatnot. Chris C asked about taking over Javashock, but, for branding reasons, I've put it down. Season 5 was the last one. You may see a new slam develop in the Brazos Valley. We'll see...

I got footage of the whole thing and will put up bits and pieces as I get it rendered. That will give a much better impression than any summary I could offer. It'll also offer me blog-fodder for a good week and a half to come.

This being my blog, I did a quick outtake of one of my own pieces first. I offer you, for the first time in decent lighting (I'm doing on a higher-quality render for the album) "ADD TV" (77MB - avoid on slow connections!).

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Reminder: Mic Check Tonight feat. Stephen Sargent

It's Steve Sargent's last night at Mic Check tonight. Rather than the usual open mic, there will be four to six featured poets, each doing three poems. The list is not complete yet, but I know that you'll get to see and hear

-Liz
-Tina from Houston
-Colin Gilbert
-me
-Steve

plus the band headed by Steve's brother.

8pm
Revolution Cafe

See you there.

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Are you Hubert Wolfe?

Is your name by any chance Adolph Blaine Charles David Earl Frederick Gerald Hubert Irvin John Kenneth Lloyd Martin Nero Oliver Paul Quincy Randolph Sherman Thomas Uncas Victor William Xerxes Yancy Zeus Wolfe­schlegelstein­hausenberger­dorffvoraltern­waren­gewissenhaft­schaferswessen­schafewaren­wohlgepflege­und­sorgfaltigkeit­beschutzen­von­angreifen­durch­ihrraubgierigfeinde­welche­voraltern­zwolftausend­jahres­vorandieerscheinen­wander­ersteer­dem­enschderraumschiff­gebrauchlicht­als­sein­ursprung­von­kraftgestart­sein­lange­fahrt­hinzwischen­sternartigraum­auf­der­suchenach­diestern­welche­gehabt­bewohnbar­planeten­kreise­drehen­sich­und­wohin­der­neurasse­von­verstandigmen­schlichkeit­konnte­fortplanzen­und­sicher­freuen­anlebens­langlich­freude­und­ruhe­mit­nicht­ein­furcht­vor­angreifen­von­anderer­intelligent­geschopfs­von­hinzwischen­sternartigraum, Senior?

If it is, feel free to condense it to something more manageable, like good old Hubert Wolfe, typesetter, did. OK, whether or not the guy actually existed is debatable. It's also beside the point.

When your name is already only a few letters long, say Edward, or Jacklyn, why do you feel it necessary to only sign an email using E or J? Really, it does not take significantly longer, unless you are writing literally thousands of communiques per day, to just write your whole name. You're not a rock star or royalty. You're not illiterate. Write your name.

Until I next hear from you,
F

Friday, September 5, 2008

ENGL235, here's additional reading for Monday

Besides reading the handout selection from Anne Carson's Plainwater, choose any two pieces of flash nonfiction from the following sites:

Brevity

flashquake

The Awkward Experience of Teaching Oneself

Yesterday I taught myself in two classes - an Intro to Lit taught by another graduate student, Lisa D'Amico, and AMST300: Imagined Americas taught by Dr. Susan Stabile, associate professor and director of the American Studies program at A&M.

I avoid teaching my own work in my own courses, with perhaps one exception per semester, and a brief one at that. I'll choose some work in progress to display to a creative writing class, something that has many drafts so that I can model the process of revision for them (this is more difficult to do with someone else's work, hence my decision to use my own). I once made an Intro to Rhetoric and Composition class read a paper about EverQuest and ecology that I have forthcoming in Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, but it was a one-time experiment.

The Intro to Lit class went well. It was fun. I was there to present performance poetry, and since the emphasis was on performance, I can switch on "performer" JeFF and then objectively discuss stylistic elements of the performance as "teacher" JeFF. Additionally, since I'm working on this instructional album, my thoughts of late have been circling around how to explain the workings of performance poetry to an introductory audience.

The American Studies course was more awkward. I spent two days leading brief discussions and answering questions about El Oceano y La Serpiente / The Ocean and The Serpent. It was a hard call for their first major reading. I'm not questioning Susan's judgment, just noting that a bi(well-really-multi)lingual text that is meant to raise more questions than it answers is a tough beginning for these students.

The problem, I think, is more than just the nature of the text. On the one hand, yeah, it's tough. It's circular. The poems are cross-referential not only across pages, but up and down and diagonally. It's the most complex thing I've ever written, which in fact is one reason Susan chose it for her course.

More than that, though, it asks certain things of the reader that most of the students weren't ready for. They wanted answers. Many of the questions, though this thankfully shifted over time, had to do with riddling out individual lines - what does this mean? Even at the 300 level, it appeared that most of the instruction these students had received in previous classes was to treat the text as an object, as the end-all, rather than a set of instructions for how to encounter the world or as guidelines for the pursuit of further knowledge.

So why does that make it awkward to teach? Because I can't give them the answers they want. More than that, the answers I have aren't necessarily the answers. There were expectations that I had of the text, associations I made when writing, that I do not expect anyone else to get. For example, the dual symbolism of the string TTTTTTTTTTTTT represents not only masts but crucifixes (these Ts come after "masts rising from the sea" and are followed by "all roads lead / to Rome"). I can't guarantee the reader will pick up on that, so if I say it in class, I may have given too much authority to myself. The sequence is largely about questioning authority, finding the answers that undermine. So when a couple of students started tossing out potential readings, some of which I hadn't intended, I had to pause and consider from an outside viewpoint whether or not those readings made sense. We worked through it as a class. Some of the readings held up, some didn't.

And at the end of the day, I think I looked like one of two things.

A) an author who didn't understand his own text

B) one of those pretentious shmucks who won't give a straight answer because he thinks it makes his work appear smarter than it really is

If any of those students come across this blog, the answer (yeah, I'll finally give you one), is

C) OcSerp is bigger than I am. I've spent longer than you wandering its corridors, and I haven't found a way out yet. I'm not sure if I consider the sequence smarter than it really is, but it's smarter than I am. There's at least one way in which we're alike, however - neither of us thinks we have all the answers.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Blognostic

Dear Molly McLay has introduced me to a wonderful concept in light of my last post. I was surprised to find out she had not just read my blog, but was reading it, getting it through an RSS feed. There's a sort of surprise that many bloggers seem to feel when they discover someone is regularly reading their work. Molly suggested that we who expect to just shout into the Abyss are blog-agnostic, neither confirming nor denying the presence of the Reader. I dub myself blognostic (which, technically, would mean something more like believing in the wisdom of blogs, but screw proper etymology, I like it!)...

OS-pagan

This begins with Windows Vista. I don't like it. It's not the embodiment of all that is evil in the world, but it has several annoying problems that I find myself unable to fix. Simple things like not being able to transfer large blocks of files from a flash drive to the hard drive or vice versa. It just sits there for hours, if I let it, trying to decide how long it will take to transfer the files rather than just transferring them. I've tried patches, suggested updates from forums, etc. Nothing seems to work. Add in the fact that, while I haven't yet had a Blue Screen of Death, the OS does just lock up from time to time, and I couldn't take it anymore.

I switched to Linux at home a few months ago. Linux Mint, to be specific (no, I'm not asking for a debate over the relative merits of different linux distributions...I don't have an internet connection at home, and Linux Mint came with the drivers that would allow me to play mp3s, watch DVDs, etc, without downloading anything new). I dual-boot, meaning I can still use Windows Vista if need be (say, to sync my iPod Touch), but the computer loads up Linux by default.

When I'm at Texas A&M, I alternately use Windows and Mac computers. Vista is installed on the SmartPodium in the classroom in which I teach. The English Department has XP and Mac OSX on computers in our two labs. In my office, there's a somewhat creaky PC running Windows 2000. This is all a long way of saying that I use "all three" operating systems in various configurations/versions.

I keep seeing this called "OS agnostic." People who switch freely among Windows, Mac, and Linux refer to themselves this way.

WTF?

I know there's variation within agnosticism, but whatever you are doing with three operating systems, it's not agnostic. You don't question that there's a possibility of an OS. You don't question whether or not humans can know the identity of the OS.

What you are is poly-OS. Or perhaps OS-pagan-with-particular-reference-to-the-cosmopolitan-paganism-of- Rome. Or even straight-up humanist (kidding about the last one...maybe). You know about all three operating systems and simply don't prefer one over the other as an end-all-be-all. That's not agnosticism in any sense of the word.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

OcSerp in the Classroom

My first chapbook, El Oceano y La Serpiente / The Ocean and The Serpent, is on the syllabus for American Studies 300 here at A&M. I visited the class today to talk about it. A lot was said. Stay tuned for an update on Thursday. I expect that most of them got hit by so much context and information that the poem(s) will seem wholly new when they reread tonight or tomorrow.

I Can Only Freestyle in the Shower

Sigh. This post comes two days after Mic Check, which I hosted Sunday night. I didn't check voice messages, so I missed the fact that Steve would be out of town, meaning last Sunday would not be his last appearance. When Steve's not there, somebody fills in for him as host. If I'm around, that's usually me.

After a week of getting the house ready (and it's ready - realtor open house was today), I just wasn't a particularly good host. This isn't a problem when there are a lot of poets. We'd all prefer to have a long list of poets, and then it's easy to follow rule #1 of being an emcee - get out of the way. Really, when there's sufficient talent, you're just there to move things along. However, when there's a crowd of 60 people and only 3 poets signed up, the host has to get a little creative.

Most of the time, that means having some community games at the ready. On Sunday we had four volunteers write limericks about A&M/Aggies/Revolution Cafe. One gentleman who I picked from the crowd informed me during the break that English wasn't his native language. It was something in Nigerian for which he did not have an English translation. No problem, says I, just go up there, say this is your limerick, and say anything at all in your native tongue. It would have been a good gag. Instead he took the time to craft a semi-limerick about how he hated Revolution now for dragging him up there.

There wasn't much love in the audience. Check that, there was a lot of love for a particular poet, who had produced a twenty-to-thirty-person entourage. There was polite clapping for all poets. But there was virtually no interest in getting involved. This killed the possibility of doing more community games unless I wanted to really rag on people.

So I just shot my mouth off. Nothing too offensive, just random rambling. It amuses some of the crowd, annoys some of the crowd, and it's nights like that when I don't care which is which. If I have to drag responses out of you, then I'll just hit joke after joke until I can detect something of what you want.

I can tell it's been a long time since I participated in the end-of-show adlib. Usually I'll come up with a dirty joke (they're usually mildly funny, too). Somewhat less often I'll say something profound. Last night I just ate mic and let down the audience. Luckily all the other improvs were pretty good. It's the host's job to give them a few extra minutes to come up with something if the words prove difficult. Pelvis, elephant, and whatever the third word was, those weren't bad to work with. But once baba ghanoush got thrown into the mix, everything went to hell.

Of course, in the shower Monday morning, I immediately start freestyling: "From an elephant's pelvis I / carved a boomerang / ruined whole cities / 'fore they threw me in the clank / better known as the clink / Sorry, can't think / come up with synonyms for slammer while you sip your drink." Not spectacular, I know. You can only imagine the dreck that spilled from my mouth on Sunday.

Steve will have his show this coming Sunday. Phew...