I am trying to write my Shakespeare paper, here in the library. I am having a lot of trouble starting. I need a F*ing thesis and the question is very open-ended making it hard to articulate an argument. I need to form something that is arguable, something someone would greatly disagree with. But the question is compare and contrast Macbeth and Shylock as Tragic Heroes. What the hell do i write? I have a few ideas but all have holes and are weak.
I decided to listen to some music to free up my mind and I put on "Mad World" but the cover by The Red Paintings. They are a really great Australian band. i saw them on tour with the Dresden Dolls. Their thing is they have painters work on a canvas during their set. As the songs progress the painting gets more detailed. It's really something to watch. They have a very odd light show and also have these people dressed as robots moving robotronically. It is very hard to decipher if it is an actual person or a robot (the costume design is very thorough). By the end of the set I realized they were part of the show, part of the art. The band plays their beautiful music (some of it lol), they have painters create a work of art within 35 minutes, and they have performace art as well. In my schovonoistic mindset I have grown into I thought about the artists getting with women after the show. I am sure the lead singer does well, but then i thought about the human art. I highly doubt they get approached after a show with star struck teens eager to spend some personal time. And I thought to myself, that is true performance art. That is true art. When it is not for the end result, not the product or benefits but the actually doing. The creative process.
These papers do not matter. In years from now it will not matter if i get an A on this paper or a B+, but how I do this will affect me. My habits and routine, my depth of passion, my perseverance. I am still scared and anxious and I have no idea where I am going with this paper but I have to shake that. I have to bust this paper out and get it done. i really do love writing papers but sometimes they get to me. They really take a chunk of my soul with them. I give 100% of myself and always feel i put my heart on the line. If you reject a paper of mine, you reject me.
Monday, December 3, 2007
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Paris, je t'aime
I just watched paris, je t'aime. Which I think translates to Paris in love or something to that effect. It had a trully amazing concept. The movie was made up of 20 5 minute short films. Each done by a different writer/director/cast/crew. The thing that united all the films was that it all took place in Paris and was about love in one way or another. It opens with a short about a miserable man who can not find love anywhere. He sizes up couples who pass him as he watched through the mirror in his car. He looks at them approaching then follows them through his rearview mirror. A woman approaches whom he is very attracted to, when he turns to look at her in the mirror, she is not there. lol At first I foolishly thought to myself "what is she a vampire or something" but what happened is she fell by his car, out of his view. They wind up having a conversation, as she rests. Very simple plot and everything but it was quite delightful.
Out of the twenty I distinctly remember only a handful. My two favorite involve teenage love and early twenties love. The first takes place at a riverbank. Three young french boys sit by the river. Two of them call out to every woman who passes. They spit out typical pick up lines getting turned down more severly the harder they persist. The third boy sits there quietly eating his sandwich. It's evident he is not gay because he make eye contact with a Sihk girl to his left. They shy smile but he does not speak. The friends continue to oogle the women who pass. They girl gets fet up and leaves. As she walks away she trips over a rock and cuts herself. The teenager immediately comes to her aid. He helps her up and picks her bag from the dirt. Later on when talking with her grandfather about the situation, upon being thanked he responds "it was only natural." The other boys who were yelling to women didnt even flinch when the girl fell. They even laughed and made a joke or two. That is the difference between hormones and romance. After Francois (the romantic) helps Zarka with her wounds she leaves to go to the mosque. Francois does something that i could never do. Something I wish society deemed acceptable. I feel like so many courtly love traditions have been worn down over the years. In women's attempts to play hard to get or merely to protect themselves...any form of uninvited pursuit has been greatly frowned upon. In the film, he goes to the mosque and waits for her. When she comes out they speak and she introduces him to her grandfather. The three walk, and speak kind words. But I feel now, these days in New York, I would never pursue a woman like that. If I gave a woman my seat on the bus or if we shared a moment somewhere, and I did not get her number, it would be odd to show up somewhere she made reference to. Perhaps that is just me and I am off on social norms but that is my view of the current world. I am ever trying to not be a 'creep' but in this day and age following your impulses deems it so. It's really annoying. There was a time when it was acceptable to go to a woman's window sill uninvited inorder to woo her. Now, things are just differnt. Everyone is so sensative and scared of global warming, terrorism, egg whites. The power of the unknown is consuming and we are all prisoners of fear.
I realize this is contradictory of my most recent post on the class blog but I guess I am expressing the hypocrasy of the duality in technology here in contemporary America.
Out of the twenty I distinctly remember only a handful. My two favorite involve teenage love and early twenties love. The first takes place at a riverbank. Three young french boys sit by the river. Two of them call out to every woman who passes. They spit out typical pick up lines getting turned down more severly the harder they persist. The third boy sits there quietly eating his sandwich. It's evident he is not gay because he make eye contact with a Sihk girl to his left. They shy smile but he does not speak. The friends continue to oogle the women who pass. They girl gets fet up and leaves. As she walks away she trips over a rock and cuts herself. The teenager immediately comes to her aid. He helps her up and picks her bag from the dirt. Later on when talking with her grandfather about the situation, upon being thanked he responds "it was only natural." The other boys who were yelling to women didnt even flinch when the girl fell. They even laughed and made a joke or two. That is the difference between hormones and romance. After Francois (the romantic) helps Zarka with her wounds she leaves to go to the mosque. Francois does something that i could never do. Something I wish society deemed acceptable. I feel like so many courtly love traditions have been worn down over the years. In women's attempts to play hard to get or merely to protect themselves...any form of uninvited pursuit has been greatly frowned upon. In the film, he goes to the mosque and waits for her. When she comes out they speak and she introduces him to her grandfather. The three walk, and speak kind words. But I feel now, these days in New York, I would never pursue a woman like that. If I gave a woman my seat on the bus or if we shared a moment somewhere, and I did not get her number, it would be odd to show up somewhere she made reference to. Perhaps that is just me and I am off on social norms but that is my view of the current world. I am ever trying to not be a 'creep' but in this day and age following your impulses deems it so. It's really annoying. There was a time when it was acceptable to go to a woman's window sill uninvited inorder to woo her. Now, things are just differnt. Everyone is so sensative and scared of global warming, terrorism, egg whites. The power of the unknown is consuming and we are all prisoners of fear.
I realize this is contradictory of my most recent post on the class blog but I guess I am expressing the hypocrasy of the duality in technology here in contemporary America.
Saturday, December 1, 2007
Second Life Presentation
This is my Second Life Presentation. I apologize for the Ken Burns Effect on every slide! lol I can not for the life of me remember how to take it off. I knew how to do it a year ago but it has slipped my mind for some reason. So now we have a zoom on every single slide! I tried to vary it up with some video of me/my second life character, and some still frames. I hope you enjoy it.
Reading Response 2
Chapter 1 of Smart Mobs
In Chapter one I learned how Rheingold and his associates derived information from people. They ask. So simple. Some of the answers they get from people sounds completely rational and other quite off. One statistic was completely comprehendable. To me at least. Perhaps not to other un savvy persons. Or an out of touch person like my father who has no idea about texting. But anyway, an 18 year old man told them he "sent and received a few dozen messages everyday" (Rheingold 3). Now this is probably a pretty cool kid, because I send and receive probably 15-20 a day. But girls, girls man. They are very into texting. I personally know people that can have a conversation that takes up 100 texts. Can you believe that?
The most ridiculous thing is on the following page where a motorcycle gang was formed through texting. Apparently one of the members wanted to leave the gang so she could study abroad. The leader didnt like this and ordered 4 of the members to beat her up. This ended in arrests. First of all which is so ridiculous on so many levels because are you being serious? How did you not expect to get caught? You are using a traceable means and secondly "REALLY??!!" I mean these people never even met before. I found it funny that a few of the members didnt even own a motorcycle. Such a joke.
One thing I agree with is : "Getting a mobile phone grants teenagers a degree privacy and right of assembly previously unavailable, which they use to construct a networked alternative space that is available from where ever they are" (5).
An idea i completely disagree with is that cell phones have ANYTHING to do with social tardiness. They attack the issue of teenagers being more tardy to social events and this being linked to celluar phones. The writer is under this delusion that people feel "there" because they are talking to the people at the event through texting. This is crazy. People are late because of social norms. The norm use to be "be on time." Now it is the opposite. If a party starts at 9 you get there at 10:30, 11:00 earliest. If we it is a formal event, maybe a half hour. So 8 o'clock, they arrive at 8:30. It is because you are presenting the illusion you are cool and have somewhere better to be. This event isnt THAT important. It's the whole playing hard to get, having the power thing. It has NOTHING to do with texting lol. Our generation is changing from people older than us, and the norms adjust.
In Chapter one I learned how Rheingold and his associates derived information from people. They ask. So simple. Some of the answers they get from people sounds completely rational and other quite off. One statistic was completely comprehendable. To me at least. Perhaps not to other un savvy persons. Or an out of touch person like my father who has no idea about texting. But anyway, an 18 year old man told them he "sent and received a few dozen messages everyday" (Rheingold 3). Now this is probably a pretty cool kid, because I send and receive probably 15-20 a day. But girls, girls man. They are very into texting. I personally know people that can have a conversation that takes up 100 texts. Can you believe that?
The most ridiculous thing is on the following page where a motorcycle gang was formed through texting. Apparently one of the members wanted to leave the gang so she could study abroad. The leader didnt like this and ordered 4 of the members to beat her up. This ended in arrests. First of all which is so ridiculous on so many levels because are you being serious? How did you not expect to get caught? You are using a traceable means and secondly "REALLY??!!" I mean these people never even met before. I found it funny that a few of the members didnt even own a motorcycle. Such a joke.
One thing I agree with is : "Getting a mobile phone grants teenagers a degree privacy and right of assembly previously unavailable, which they use to construct a networked alternative space that is available from where ever they are" (5).
An idea i completely disagree with is that cell phones have ANYTHING to do with social tardiness. They attack the issue of teenagers being more tardy to social events and this being linked to celluar phones. The writer is under this delusion that people feel "there" because they are talking to the people at the event through texting. This is crazy. People are late because of social norms. The norm use to be "be on time." Now it is the opposite. If a party starts at 9 you get there at 10:30, 11:00 earliest. If we it is a formal event, maybe a half hour. So 8 o'clock, they arrive at 8:30. It is because you are presenting the illusion you are cool and have somewhere better to be. This event isnt THAT important. It's the whole playing hard to get, having the power thing. It has NOTHING to do with texting lol. Our generation is changing from people older than us, and the norms adjust.
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