Story/Novel Idea: Spectral Tech, Inc.

Eighteen-year-old Court has been on the streets ever since police found him bloodied up and unconscious a year ago. He has no recollection of what happened or who he is. He had no wallet on him, no identification except for a name inscribed on his (handkerchief/coat/other). Lives in an old, half-finished factory with two friends--a lady named Phyllis (who calls him Courtney) and a kid his age, Zeke. There have been recent protests against Spectral Tech, Inc., a company whose consciousness-porting technology allows the wealthy to hire 'Specter' agents, lower-class people who essentially give up control of their bodies for a certain amount of time in exchange for monetary compensation. The wealthy still control all, but now the middle class is made up primarily of so-called "specs," and with technological developments in manufacturing, agriculture, etc. people who oppose conscience porting have no real means of sustenance and thus live in poverty. Having lived on the streets, Court has become a champion of the common man and an active opponent to Spectral Tech.

Some rights reserved (CC BY-SA 2.0) by Greg Bayles, modified from original, by James Nash

Having had little success in terms of his peaceful protests, Court eventually decides to take things into his own hands by sneaking into the highrise where Spectral Tech houses their executive offices. Court and some of his fellow activists venture inside, but Court gets separated from his comrades and ends up being chased by guards up to the top floor. Court tries a number of doors, and just as the guards burst from the elevator, one of the doors scans Court's eye and opens inward. Court tumbles inside and a computer voice greets him by name as the door closes gently behind him. Looks around at the posh office space. Big windows, plush white carpets, modern art. Quiet, no sound from the security officers who are probably pounding down the corridor and will soon be bursting through the mahogany door.  In the corner, Court sees a Spectral Chamber (provides nourishment, health monitoring, etc. so they don't have to leave the immersive environment unless they want to). He's never seen one before. Goes over, jumps when he sees that there's a man in the chamber! Court's blood is boiling, anger rising, and then he sees the Spectral display. The display's field of vision has centered on a Spectral display, creating an infinite loop of decreasing windows. Court looks over at the man, and in his peripheral vision he sees that the display now shows the same man. Right as the guards burst through the door, Court comes to the realization that he himself is a specter...

Bridging the Divide: How Digital Writing Can Save the Humanities

[This is the first post in a series on the benefits and advantages of digital writing and distribution over traditional scholarly inquiry. In you have thoughts, suggestions, questions, or contentions, please feel free to make them known in the comments.]

[Over to "Schematic Overview"] [Down to "Connectivity"]

Introduction

Image Credit: Sporti

Creative Commons License: Attribution 2.0 Generic

I began this project initially as a piece of formal academic writing. I realized, of course, the inherent irony in traditional academic writing, but I felt at that time that my work wouldn't be taken seriously if it were presented as a blog. As I began writing, though, I realized that if I held to that same form that I sought to reform, I would be limiting my ability to adequately express my ideas in a way that would be meaningful and powerful. In the introduction to Yevgeny Zamyatin's We, Peter Rudy explains Zamyatin's belief that form and content must complement one another, "that only a heretical form could adequately dramatize heretical ideas" (x). Perhaps saying that scholars need to look at digital writing as the salvation of the humanities isn't as heretical as some of the claims being made in contemporary scholarship, but nonetheless, if the humanities are to remain relevant within a modern context, they must learn to thrive within the mediums of our day. And if the humanities are to survive the transition to this brave new world of the digital age, there must be a bridge built between formal and digital writing. Academia must broaden its scope and prove its grand potential.
preparing a piece of academic writing dedicated to the weaknesses of

Bridging the Divide: Schematic Overview

[Back to "Introduction"]

This project is not a research paper. While it embraces certain fundamental aspects of a research paper, the very nature of the medium requires that the reader think about these ideas differently than he might were he to read a traditional research paper instead. Neither is this meant to be a comprehensive study of writing or of digital distribution. Rather, it serves as an exploration of key concepts and scholarship as pertaining to digital writing and is written with the intent of helping students, scholars, and other interested parties to make better use of digital tools and strategies in creating and disseminating meaningful content.

To the right is a visual scheme for the overall structure of the work. The main argument follows a central path, as one might expect from a typical research paper, but each main "body page" includes branching links to pertinent digital topics and further scholarship. Use the links at the top and bottom of each page to navigate to adjacent pages, and keep an eye out within the texts themselves for links to branching pages, denoted by [square brackets].

[Back to "Introduction"]

Bridging the Divide: Social Proof in Action

[Back to "Connectivity"]

To demonstrate the points of social proof and social discovery in a humanities context, I wanted to share a recent encounter that I had with Harold Bloom, the esteemed Yale sterling scholar. I had been researching Paradise Lost's Satan figure for an undergraduate class on John Milton, and I came across an article that stated that Bloom had advised the author to read Paradise Lost from a secularist view. This was right in line with the claim that I was trying to prove, but searching through Bloom's scholarly publications, I wasn't able to find much of anything that contributed to my understanding of the topic. I had the presumption to try contacting Dr. Bloom himself for more info, and while I honestly didn't expect a response--especially not from someone so prominent within the literary community--I figured it was worth a shot if anything that my digital writing professor had been saying was true. I was very pleasantly surprised when, two days later, I opened my inbox to find a response. My email was as follows:

Bridging the Divide: The Watermill Principle

[Back to "Connectivity"]

Photo courtesy of Oliver Bacquet
Creative Commons License: Attribution 2.0 Generic

Despite the Watermill Principle's utter simplicity, it remains an essential component in understanding the potential of digital writing to rescue and revitalize the humanities. The concept is this: if you want a watermill to work for you, you build it by a river. Initially, this concept may seem a bit facile, but when related to writing and, more specifically, to digital writing, it becomes a foundational principle for creating meaningful content and effecting real change in the world.

So, I say it again: build your watermill by a river, not in a desert. Too often in formal academic writing, the proposed audience consists of a selective group of scholars and specialists. Academics often assume that because their work is specific and eclectic, it must therefore have relevance only to an isolated group of individuals. While this is, in some cases, true, more often than not, scholarly works are kept from cultural relevance only because they are kept from the people. Scholars sometimes build their watermills in the desert and either expect the river to flow to them or spend much of their time trying to carve channels in order to direct the flow of readers to their work--sometimes, dare I say, even through social media! While this perhaps proves effective in certain cases, the reality is that there exists a much simpler and more effective way of engaging audiences: you build around those audiences. Rather than trying to redirect the stream toward one's work, the digital scholar builds his research around people and communities, engaging in social proof and receiving feedback on both informal and formal levels. Admittedly, this involves a major paradigm shift for scholars who are used to working in more constrained environments, but building one's scholarly watermill on the river means that the flow of readers is already established. The ideas have been vetted in early stages of social proof, and there are already people interested in the topics, be they scholars, enthusiasts, or just curious users. Aside from that, digital modes of distribution have the potential to open up works of scholarship to a much broader audience, to a veritable river of people and communities with diverse interests and backgrounds, so the work becomes not a static monument to be viewed only by the acolytes of academia but instead a fundamental component within the rich and vibrant conversation and progression of human thought.

[Back to "Connectivity"]

Bridging the Divide: Connectivity

[Up to "Introduction"]   [Down to "Ease of Distribution"]

[Over to "The Watermill Principle"]   [Over to "Social Proof in Action"]

Image courtesy of naomi83
Wikimedia Commons

Digital writing further demonstrates the usefulness of the humanities through its emphasis on connectivity and its potential for a socially-mediated research process. In saying "digital writing," I do not mean simply using a computer to produce writing. Rather, it implies an entirely new writing environment--one that is integrally connected to the Internet and, as such, to a broad network of readers and contributors. It can thus, in some sense, be seen as more of a culture than a mode of production. This "culture" of connectivity, however, is proving increasingly vital in the modern economy, and scholars within the humanities will benefit greatly in seeking to harness the sociality of digitally-mediated writing.

Bridging the Divide: The Long Tail of Digital Scholarship

[Back to "Ease of Distribution"]

Image Credit: Chris Anderson
Creative Commons License: Attribution 2.0 Generic

One of the most fundamental principles in coming to understand a modern mode of content distribution is that of the "Long Tail." The concept of the Long Tail is built on the idea of a left-skewed statistical distribution for content popularity, and basically, it proposes that providing "tail" content serves in increasing sales at minimal costs while providing for a much richer and more diverse content base. The Long Tail was first introduced in 2004 by Wired magazine's chief editor, Chris Anderson, who at that time applied the Long Tail specifically to the entertainment industry. Since that time, the concept of the Long Tail has expanded to embrace  banking, science, and a host of other areas, scholarship among them. Anderson noted that because songs and other forms of digital content facilitate inexpensive reproduction and distribution, producers and online media marketplaces could offer a much broader selection than could, for example, brick-and-mortar stores, which had to rely primarily on high-grossing, "hit" songs. Even on purely digital platforms, these mainstream songs account for the bulk of revenues, but because hosting and distributing "long tail" content is so inexpensive, digital marketplaces are finding that they can cater to both mainstream and more eclectic audiences. As Anderson notes on his blog, "As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-targeted goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare." For scholars writing on somewhat obscure topics like Anglo-Saxon poetic meter or the use of zeugma in the works of Alexander Pope, this ought to sound at least a little bit enticing.

Bridging the Divide: Ease of Distribution

[Up to "Connectivity"]  [Down to "Doing the Risky Thing"]  

[Over to "The Long Tail of Digital Scholarship"]

Digital writing further substantiates the value of the humanities through its ease of reproduction and dissemination. Historically, the sphere of academic publication has been one dominated by scarcity. Publishers want to publish books, and scholars want to share their ideas, but at the end of the day, printing is costly, and there is only so much money to go around. That means that scholarly monographs and journals are limited not only in the number of physical copies that can be profitably produced but also in the overall form--the font size, margin spacing, and use of graphics.

With the onset of digital publication, however, academia has entered an abundance economy. In the past, even integrating black and white images or graphics into a text substantially increased the cost of publication, and widespread distribution of scholarly texts was prohibitively expensive. Modern digital technology has made it possible to easily and inexpensively incorporate not only pictures but music, video clips, surveys, and other forms of interactive media into scholarly and non-scholarly works. In addition, [long tail] dynamics have made it possible for even hyper-specialized works of scholarship to reach broad audiences in a number of different disciplines and on a much more global scale. Works that previously justified no more than five hundred print copies are being downloaded and utilized thousands and thousands of times thanks to online repositories and recent digitization efforts. These efforts are making knowledge more accessible for millions of users throughout the world, thus demonstrating to a broad audience the value of the humanities within a modern context.

Bridging the Divide: "Doing the Risky Thing"

[Up to "Ease of Distribution]   [Over to "Works Cited"]

Even emerging forms like video games have the potential to

engage audiences in meaningful ways and contribute to a

contemporary understanding of art and literacy.

Screenshot from The Last of Us, by Naughty Dog, Inc.

Creative Commons License Attribution 2.0 Generic

The reality is that the Internet is not really a new form or an aberration within the spectrum of human interaction--it's just the next phase in a progression of human communication and thought. Writing has served as the dominant form of communication for thousands of years, but it is not the first mode of communication nor the last. Modern, digital paradigms are providing means for integrating a variety of engaging and instructive media resources into writing, and many scholars anticipate the day when such resources will find their place within the broad body of formal academic writing as well. In "Digital Media Studies Futures,"Ben Aslinger and Nina Huntemann suggest that the future will increasingly require writers to bridge disciplinary gaps and rethink literacy to incorporate non-textual formats like video games and film. Sally Pryor offers a similar evaluation of "integrationism" in her article, "Who’s Afraid of Integrationist Signs?" (651). Assessing the historically oral nature of early communication and the visual nature of early writing systems, Pryor suggests that audiovisual and written forms ought to be treated as “complementary facets of one integrated form of communication” (650). In the future it will be harder to define oneself as a scholar of film or writing or music because the concepts are converging, and only those who are able to adapt to these new media formats and writing styles will be in a position to promote the usefulness and relevance of the humanities in our age. We are, in some sense, entering into a new Renaissance, and those who neglect to take advantage of modern forms of digital writing will increasingly find themselves cast into a self-inflicted Dark Age. The world is changing, and with it, scholars and academics must likewise change, adapting to new circumstances and making use of new tools. 

Bridging the Divide: Works Cited

[Back to "Doing the Risky Thing"]

Works Cited

[Below are selected works available through paid online archives. All open resources are linked directly in the body of the blog posts.]

Aslinger, Ben, and Nina B. Huntemann. "Digital Media Studies Futures." Media, Culture & Society 35.1

     (2013): 9-12. Sage Premier 2013. Web. 26 Oct. 2013.

DeVoss, Dànielle Nicole, and James E. Porter. "Why Napster Matters to Writing: Filesharing as a New
     Ethic of Digital Delivery." Computers and Composition 23.2 (2006): 178-210. Print.

Fitzpatrick, Kathleen. "Do 'The Risky Thing' In Digital Humanities." Chronicle Of Higher Education 58.6
     (2011): A96. LexisNexis. Web. 22 Oct. 2013.

Laquintano, Tim. "Manufacturing Scarcity: Online Poker, Digital Writing, and the Flow of Intellectual
     Property." Computers and Composition 27.3 (2010): 193-201. Elsevier SD Freedom. Web. 24 Oct.
     2013.

Liu, Alan. “The State of the Digital Humanities: A Report and a Critique.” Arts and Humanities in Higher
     Education 11.2 (2011): 8-41. Sage Premier 2013. Web. 22 Oct. 2013.

Pryor, Sally. "Who’s Afraid of Integrationist Signs? Writing, Digital Art, Interactivity and Integrationism."
     Language Sciences 33.4 (2011): 647-53. Elsevier SD Freedom. Web. 24 Oct. 2013.

[Back to "Doing the Risky Thing"]

NaNoWriMo Day 2

This is just to let you know that I do get around
to writing some stuff for NaNoWriMo below.
Image by Greg Bayles, remixed from Wikimedia Commons

Dear Blogger,

They say NaNoWriMo is to get you writing. So, if I don't want to write my novel on day 2, does that mean I fail? Or is the whole purpose of this just to get me writing in general?

I slept in later than I ever have before today. I think it might have had something to do with staying up until some ungodly hour to make sure I got in my first NaNoWriMo post so that I wouldn't have a bad precedent, but I'm thinking I might have been better off just wriitng in the morning instead... if not for the dream... I don't usually dream, but when I do, it's usually either really profound and changes my life or is unintelligible until some future event and then kind of reminds me where I'm supposed to be going. I don't have just dreamy dreams. They're not happy. But last night, I found myself in a movie--some movie that I saw a long time ago--and for those few minutes I was happier than I have been in a long, long time. That's not to say that I'm not generally happy, but in that moment--I don't know what it was--I was just carefree and happy, and I felt like I had all of the answers to the questions that have vexed me this last while. Life just made sense, and I thought to myself, "Now, when I wake up, I can just go watch the movie, and I'll understand in real life, and I can be happy there, too."

Chapter 2, Pt 1: The Trial

Happy NaNoWriMo. I'm doing it this year. Rough day to have to start, but I got some writing out there, so I guess that counts for something. Will catch up on words tomorrow or Sunday. P.S. I'm finally writing a novel. Be excited. Maybe not about this chapter (it's intentionally dry for my own purposes), but be looking for stuff all this month, and if for some reason it lags, get on my case about it.

"There will be order in the council room!" The Speaker's ring pulsed white, and the room fell into an anxious hush as the other two tribunal members entered the room and assumed their seats at the front of the crowded hall. The Speaker himself could not have been older than fifty, though his hair, like the oculus shard on his ring, was white like the Northlands snow that my father told me about when I was young. The other two tribunes were younger, kinder, though their eyes spoke of years of judiciary training which had weighed heavy on their minds. The younger of the two, a woman, looked like she might have been from a different city, maybe Sarta, to the south, but it was difficult to distinguish her facial features through the customary black paint of criminal justices.

Catching the direction of my gaze, my court-appointed legal rep leaned toward me and whispered excitedly. "She's one of ours." My excitement apparently was restrained, because he slid he chair closer to mine and continued in subdued animation: "We worked for months to win her over. I honestly didn't think we would get her, what with her being from the south. You know how tight-fisted they can be, but we got 'er in the end. Just took a few trade licenses from our friend at the ministry of commerce. You know 'im--old codger by the name of... by the name... oh, doesn't matter much anyway. We got her."

The Speaker's voice boomed again across the hall. "This morning's case is that of Private Jonah Cross. The defendant will please rise." I felt an elbow jab to my ribs and clamored noisily to my feet. "Jonah Cross. You are brought here hereby accused by Commander Raga of the Salamander Legion on charges of endangering the success and well-being of your battalion, compromising of your mission, and willfully disobeying your commanding officer. The details of this mission are yet classified and will not be discussed at this time, but what have you to say of these matters? Private, how plead you to these charges?"

"Not guilty," I heard myself mumble. The third tribunal member, a slim, young man with honeyed curls of hair, gestured to me to take my seat, and I felt the hard wooden seat rise up beneath me as the legal rep leaned in once more:

"He's also pretty new, blondie over there, but you have nothing to worry about. We made he second largest contribution to his campaign last year, and my daughter played air tag with his son two or three weeks ago. I talked to him before the case, and he's on our side. He assured me that everything would go according to our plans.

/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

of snow, before he died. He used to tell stories about his missions along the Ivory Wall, skirting along the base of the snow-laden cliffs in search of the Alchemist's Road. They never did find it, though. Or him.

It's like Bara the merchant says: "One day they're here, and every other day, you just wonder and wait."

Random Sprites

Well, I've been dabbling in sprite design, so I decided to  post a few just for fun. The pair is a couple friends of mine who happen to be married now, and the sassy lady is just a sassy lady from my imagination. That is all.

English Society Graphics

 These are a couple of random graphics that I've been working on for English Society advertisements. To quote a fictional Peter Llewelyn Davies, "It's really just a bit of silliness." Anyway, that's all. Enjoy!

Alexandria: Subscription-Based Lending Library?

The Pharos of Ptolemey at Alexandria

There's been this idea kicking around in my head for a couple weeks, and I wanted to throw it out there as a way of getting feedback and critique, because I honestly don't know what it would involve or whether copyright issues would preclude it. There are lots of different subscription-based services for music, audiobooks, movies, and TV shows, and I think that's done a lot to liberate culture in meaningful ways, but I think there's one area that's been left out (and perhaps for justifiable reasons like copyright). I call it Alexandria (or Xandria, for short). 

As you likely know, Alexandria was the site of the Great Library wherein the intellectual and spiritual wealth of the world was kept before it was sacked and burned. Xandira would play on that idea, providing unlimited access to the intellectual wealth of the ages through a subscription-based reading library. Rather than having a single or a few copies of books that people could check out, though (as is the case with most public libraries' online platforms), Xandria would provide access to any book in the archive at any time and to any number of users. Stewart Brand is credited with the digital culture mantra, "[I]nformation wants to be free," and while the intent is that information eventually be truly free--readily accessibly and at no cost--something like Xandria would be one step closer to opening the vaults of wisdom that have been if not shut then at least levied by modern publishing houses and copyright enforcers. 

Obviously, a lot of work would have to go into negotiating with copyright holders and looking into the legal plausibility of such an endeavor, but what are your thoughts on Xandria? Is this something in which you'd be interested? Have you heard of similar services? 

Making Picture-Links in Blogspot

So, in a couple of my classes, we are maintaining academic blogs on digital literacy and its ties to Moby Dick and John Milton (Paradise Lost). As lots of people are posting pictures, I wanted to do a quick post for anyone interested in making blogspot pictures link to external websites. , it's pretty basic:

1. Click on the [Insert Image] button

2. Choose the picture from the available options (Upload, From a URL, etc.)
3. Select the picture when it comes up in the window, and click on the blue [Add selected] button on the bottom of the window.
4. Position the image wherever you want, then click the HTML button on the left. This basically  brings up the code that makes your blog work.

5. Use the find option (CTRL + F in Windows, CMD + F for Mac) or scroll through the text to find "a href." An example from this document looks like this:

6. Check to make sure that this is the right picture (the filename is the last thing in the quotation marks), and change the entire web address (the content in the quote marks) to whatever website you want to link to. You'll end up with something like this:

7. Hit [Compose] to go back to the regular blogger editor, and you're done! That's it! Now, if you haven't been clicking on the pictures all along and you have made it this far, you might as well enjoy a few Google easter eggs by doing so now...

Happy blogging!

Study Break

I needed a break from reading, and I'm trying to do better at blogging consistently on this blog. I have a couple other blogs that I've been working on for classes, and that's kept me busy pretty constantly. This blog sometimes becomes the neglected child in a big family of other projects, though, and that's my biggest daily regret. The problem is that though beautiful thoughts nonetheless come from beautiful minds, it's hard to find anything in a mind cluttered by so much else.

I crave weekends, because they are really the only time when I can really just forget about everything and live in the real sense--go on adventures, write, read for fun, compose music. I am still trying to figure out the whole balancing life with school thing, because school's winning even though life is a lot more fun sometimes. The world is so full of beautiful things and beautiful ideas and beautiful people: I just wish I had more time to really come to know it all.

On a side note, I think I am going to start carrying my camera with me wherever I go, because I want to capture this moment in my life. I don't know why, but I feel like it's a really important one, and right now, I don't have the words to capture all the beauty that I experience--mostly all the people that I see--on a daily basis. I was riding my bike home the other day when a small bird shot out of a bush as I passed. I was going fast enough that as it flew away from me, it appeared to just hover before my face for ten seconds or so before finally veering off, and I was left with the impression that I had faded from existence for a moment and become the wind on its tail feathers. The week before, a butterfly brushed against my skin, and I remembered touching butterfly wings as a child, blowing the fairy dust from my fingers.

Grace alights upon us each day, I think. Our task is just to be there and remember.

The Face Behind Emoticons

One of my deep dark secrets is that I overuse exclamation points when texting and emailing. The hardest part is, it's a conscious thing. I don't finish a text only to find that somehow T9 has changed every period to an exclamation point (though it does seem to enjoy turning my every instance of "happy" into "guppy"). Rather, I go through my texts and  substitute in exclamation points in place of any periods that might mistakenly convey disinterest or lack of excitement on my part.

It is almost certainly a neurosis. 

The thing is, I just worry that people will "read me" wrong, because there is so much more to communication than just words. Words are great--don't get me wrong--but in the end, they serve as only an approximation of the rich array of feelings and interactions that make up the human experience. There is an implicit loss in meaning and complexity as emotion and perception are distilled to concrete thoughts and and then reduced and quantified within the arbitrariness of words.

Interestingly, however, we have developed pretty interesting ways of putting humanity and meaning back into text-based communication through emoticons. Though in some sense text sterilizes human interactions, removing the verbal emotion that might be present, say, in a phone call or the visual communication implicit in a face-to-face conversation, we have found ways of inserting ourselves--or at least our faces--back into even the most restrictive or limiting textual environments. Combinations of otherwise independently meaningless punctuation marks have become, instead, textual extensions of the human body, reintroducing facial expression into a form that, because of physical separation, would otherwise be preclusive to such levels of communication. Through emoticons, we become capable of conveying a much broader range of emotion and expression, which provides in turn for a more pleasurable, more human interaction as a whole. Go ahead... tell me this isn't the case the next time you see a ;) in the King James Version of the Bible. I know I smile every time I see it. And okay, maybe "I'm sad" is a perfectly fine sentiment to express, but it can hardly compare to the simplicity and elegance of :(  I mean... look at that frown. That guy is really sad.

One class mate of mine remarked the other day, "Too bad there's not a font for sarcasm." The idea maybe sounds a little bit out of the ordinary, but maybe it's not too far-fetched. I mean, we have emoticons for emotion, italics and bold for emphasis, and all caps for people over 60 who text, so why not a font for sarcasm as well?

Pleasta Meecha

 Well, I was asked to write a blog post introducing myself for a class that I'm taking on John Milton, so I figured I would post it here as well just for fun. I am not a big guy on taking photos of myself, so any time I want to post one for a profile or whatever, I have to take one on the spot, so I've included an obligatory photo. I feel like when introducing themselves, most often people emphasize the same five or so things and then finish it all off with "something interesting" which invariably becomes nothing more than an extension of one of the first five things, so this time, I'm going to take a little bit of a different approach and share some things that not everyone might know. I hope you can get to know the everyday stuff about me from just regular interactions, here and in real life.

I am a technology enthusiast with reservations. I follow all sorts of cool new technologies, from transparent solar cells to 3D printers that can be used to print viable human tissue (to quote the oracle from Hercules, "...it's gonna be big"). I'm interested (though shamefully inexperienced) in lots of different forms of digital expression, from 2D art to filmmaking, and I'm really interested in reinterpretations of older forms, like spoken word poetry and the work of young and aspiring Youtube artists like Lindsey Stirling. It's secretly a dream to make a successful vlog or Youtube channel someday. I remain adamant, however, in my opinion that just because your phone is an egghead, mine doesn't have to be a "dumb phone" even though it's from 2005. I like a lot of the features of modern phones and stuff, but I know myself well enough to know that if I had a so-called "smart" phone, I would probably quickly get sucked into all the cool apps and other stuff. So, I stick with my museum-worthy RAZR. 

See, MSPaint isn't thaaaat bad...

Ever since I was 15 or so, I've wanted to develop a low-cost method of water purification for application in low-income areas. That's pretty much what made me want to study chemistry originally (that, and the prospect of going into food sciences and developing calorie-free Goldfish crackers so I could not feel bad about being practically addicted to them). I worked at a nature preserve for a summer and actually served on a municipal water council to raise awareness of water-born illness and to encourage "green" building techniques. Yep... closet hippie. Eventually, though, English called my name, so I can still be a hippie, just in different ways.

Amarillo

New house! Yay!

Ever since I started college, I've dreamed of living in a house, and somehow this semester, the housing gods smiled upon me and things worked out just right. I guess I've always kind of gone with apartments simply because it's what my older siblings did, and added onto that was the fact that during spring and summer terms, I am incapable of living anywhere that doesn't have a good pool. I think I might spend more time during the summer swimming than sleeping, and that probably deserved some psychiatric attention, but nonetheless that's how it is. Anyway, I'm in The Amarillo House. For those of you who speak Spanish, you invariably read that wrong, because it's actually pronounced just like it looks in English. I know, strange, right? But despite the hick American feel that I get every time I tell someone where I live, I really like the place. Part of that might have to do with having my own room for the first time in about six years, but among other pluses are a washer and dryer, utilities that are included in the rent (which is oddly cheaper than any fall/winter housing that I've paid for), a family of quails in the back lot, a friendly neighbor dog, and some pretty cool roommates. I moved from my previous apartment with my roommates Joey and Aaron, and then we ended up with another guy named Greg who is really cool so far. I am really liking it so far, in any case.

School starts back up Tuesday, and that means that the next week will be full of much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, but it also means that people have started flooding back into town and the streets are crowded with lots of Freshmen who look about fifteen and lots of worried moms who look like they have lost fifteen years of their lives worrying that their kids won't have enough food on the meal plan. I, on the other hand, have been trying to squeeze the last bit of hakuna-matata out of my two-week summer vacation. That means lots of swimming, reading, friends, piano, and writing, among other things. I've been going through some old journals, and I've been working little by little on typing up some old writings, so anything that I find over the next few days that seems to be of any worth will likely end up here. Here's a little tid-bit that I found from my flight to Moscow. It's short, but I thought it was kind of quaint, so here ya go:

The horizon was an endless rainbow with reds like deep, auburn sandstone and blues so blue that you don't ever even think to ask whether it's cerulean or navy. And right down the middle was a broad band of green--the first I had ever seen in a sunrise. It was as if the entire sky were alight with hope and majesty, and the blanketed forests rolled out beneath us as spindly veins of taillights snaked across the expanse below us. Lifeblood of the land, these streams of sparks stretched on and on, spiraling out from the glowing clusters of the small Finnish towns that jumped out of our way as we passed. 

I honestly don't know what awaits me in the year to come. I think these next two semesters are pretty much set in stone, but then I'll be done with school and on my way to somewhere or something. I think sometimes how funny it is that we always seem to be rushing off to nowhere in particular, but I guess that's just the way it goes sometimes. I have thought a lot about teaching English in China next summer, which is another secret (or maybe not-so-secret) wish of mine. A lot could change in two semesters, though, so we'll see where life directs me. In any case, I'm going to really try to make the best of this last year at BYU, because I'm realizing more and more how unique of an experience it is to be here. I've had my struggles with certain things in the Happy Valley, but it really is a wonderful place in so many ways, and I think when it comes time to leave, I will miss it as I have perhaps missed no other place.

Free World

This picture is here just in case you don't
want to deal with my crazed rant.
At least you got to see a koala, right?
Clicking that link was worth it after all...

So we call ourselves the free world. We say that we are at the height of civilization, that we are the most advanced, the most successful, the most cultured. We are the emissaries of freedom. But who is really free, and what is freedom?

Is the man free whose country lives in debt to another? Are citizens free who are shackled by addictions and apathy--who can't go a day without coffee and caffeine, who can't go more than a few hours it seems without the Internet or their favorite TV shows? "They can, they can." I know. But they don't... Is a nation free whose poor starve and whose population is bound to the concrete mausoleums we call metropoli? Is the nation free when money takes precedence over moral, when who you know is more important than who you are? Are people really free when blinded by bias, when a person's skin color or religion is a justification for hatred, and can a people ever be free when they work so tirelessly to renounce the freedoms that their fathers purchased so long ago?  Are we truly free when money and social status are the currency of dreams rather than ingenuity and determination? Where is our liberty when shackled by the mind-forged manacles that we call beauty or the bonds that we call social refinement? How can a country be free when its rulers--its representatives--are slaves to corporations and conglomerates, when a man's conscience must take second stage to his political mobility and his approval rating? How can we trumpet democracy when the government has forgotten the people--when Ploutos and Oligos have crushed Demos beneath their heels?

I guess the problem that I have with writing stuff like this is that I still don't have any answers. All I have is my discontent--the feeling that things aren't as they should be, that maybe things aren't as they seem. I write, perhaps, only to stay afloat in the darkling sea that is this unintelligible world. In the end, though, maybe it doesn't really matter. People can pretty much do what they want. It's a free world, after all...

But we are thralls to apathy

Lotus Blossoms

With an eternal shrug, we run from ignorance to indifference because caring hurts too much. There are too many questions, too many contradictions, and which voice do we heed? There is too much that's truthy and not enough truth, too much myopic boldness in declaring things we don't understand and too little courage to live by the truths we know and have ever known. So it's educators' fault, right? The government's problem? Ah, but we've forgotten: we've been sitting in front of a monitor too long to remember that success begins and ends with S or us. Does the flower cease to grow when the gardener's away, or is he there to give the plant the things it needs to grow on its own time? Does the lily shrivel and die in the field when God at times seems far off? 

So maybe we really think we're justified... Sure, they waste my time with things I'll never use. Why should I wear out my eyes to memorize their fickle facts and truths that might be lies? I don't need them; I don't need anyone! The wisdom of the eternities is before us--a click away! But the thing is, no matter what you say, we're surfing through a sea of trifles and we're drowning. That Pandora's box before our eyes, that epileptic frenzy of images and sounds that sear our senses and cauterize our minds, it reduces us to a state of vegetative bliss (and surely none can fail to recognize the rapturous euphoria of cauliflower-existence). So we're happy with our lot. We're content to while away our hours in books of faces that we barely know, to breakfast on discontent and lunch upon our lotus leaves. And only thunder wakes us from our reverie.

[This is an excerpt from a spoken word poem in three parts, each addressing problems with the American educational system. Stay tuned for "Hegemony" and "Insularity," the accompanying (unfinished) sisters to this selection.]

Lead Paint

I refuse to grow up
If I'll end up
Just another lost boy
Thrown from Neverland
To Never can and Never will.
To always sleep and Never dream:
Maybe this is your dream,
But I'll hold to mine...
I've found my way
And you can't say
That I'm too young to understand.
It's okay, it's okay,
You can act like it's okay,
But the facts will say
That things... fall apart,
Our childhood playthings start
To fade from our minds much sooner
Than cheap Chinese paint
That kills children.
But we buy it. We buy it anyway...

dirty-dishes love

there are bills on the table,
and the laundry's piled high on the bed.
but the window's all alight with a love
that has no time for dirty dishes,
with a love that knows only laughter, friendship,
and slow dancing 'neath a bare, hundred-watt bulb.

seventeen

shadows of an airy past
dissolve then coalesce
as constellation sketches
on the canvas of my mind,
streaks of tarnished stardust
sighing through the dark'ning skies.

yet ashen memories ignite my soul
and whet my will to burn once more,
though in that blaze–  i'll burn.

bridges to my past...

all of these things....

I have always wanted to try out kinetic typography, but I didn't have the tools I wanted to use, so I always put it off. Well, here's a shot at kinetic typography, poetry, music composition, and video editing. The audio's not great, and every aspect of it was a bit rushed, but it was a fun start to something that I'd like to invest more time in! I hope you enjoy! The poem is below in its original format:

Thoughts on Gay Marriage

As many of you likely know, over the past few days, there has been a lot of hubbub about the Supreme Court's hearings on 'gay marriage' cases, one of them centering around California's highly-controversial Proposition 8 and the other addressing the equally-contested Defense of Marriage Act. You've likely seen a lot Facebook profile pictures changed to the red and pink equals sign over the past day or so, and you'll likely see a lot of heated arguments-- I use that word intentionally in favor of 'discussions'-- on social media platforms over the next while.

I wanted to do an overview of some of the rights that LGBT (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender) activists are seeking, and I'll add my thoughts on each as I go. Then, once I'm done with that, I'll blah-blah for a little while about what's going on between my ears in terms of the question in general. If you stay for nothing else, at least skip to the end and read the last three or four paragraphs worth of closing commentary. I get less long-winded as I write, so you have a better chance of it being short-ish.  :)

 I think it's important to define what we're really talking about here, because the different sides spend so much time bickering and arguing over what means what that everyone's too tired to listen to what anyone is actually saying. So the following list will cover rights that are currently denied gay couples seeking legal recognition for their long-term, committed relationships (comparable to what traditional marriage supporters would call "marriage"). This is by no means meant to be a comprehensive list, and also, I'm not going to use the 'M' word, because I think to really understand this debate from a legal point of view, we have to set marriage aside and look at the issues. I'll come back to marriage and all that later, though.

Magic, Monasteries, and Maslenitsa

The past while has been quite the adventure: that is for sure. I guess the highlight of the last month or

so has been Maslenitsa, but I'll save that for the end. My life over the past two weeks has been dominated by work and translation, and that's been good, I guess, but I am glad to have today as a break from it all. I decided to take my honors thesis in a new direction, so I'm now translating and analyzing Russian verbal charms, which has been a lot of fun. My analysis is based on the confluence of Christianity and paganism within these spells, which will likely be pretty apparent to you in the short charm that follows:

94. Charm against bleeding
In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. There is a sea-ocean, from the sea-ocean rides out a man so old, the steed beneath him brownish-gold, but thou, blood, stop for all time. For ever and ever. Amen.

Anyway, so that's that. It's been super interesting and super difficult at times, because a lot of the terms and ideas are pretty old. The texts themselves are from the 17th century, and I would say that I know only about half to two-thirds of the words. For the rest I spend forever guessing roots and modern variants and then looking them up in one of four or five dictionaries, both print and electronic. I've had some good success so far, though, and it's honestly been a lot of fun. I like the old, magic-esque quality that they all have. It seems right up my alley in terms of interests.

hospital bed

HOSPITAL BED

for no one really understands

the Loneliness of Death,

the Sorrow that ensues within 

those last few moments' breath.

and no one truly comprehends

the Pain of true Regret, 

the moments you would fain relive 

and words you can't forget.

One of the things that I love most about writing is it's an opportunity to develop empathy. In order to create characters, plots, or dialogues that are at all realistic, you have to frequently leave your own life, your own experiences, and drown yourself in the thoughts and sorrows and aspirations of people from all different age groups and walks of life.

"Strive"

Wade

Through the shadows of yourself,

Through the caverns of your confusion

And the dark night 

Of your doubts and fears.

Wander

Through the wonders of reflection

Through the thoughts of yesterday,

Of time long past and yet 

So here, and now.

Wait

Upon the quiet hope 

Of memories yet unarrived–

Upon the daring of a moment, 

And the hope of today,

Of a thousand summery tomorrows.

"pity these hands," à la e.e. cummings

pity these hands,

gnarled and crippled

that never ached

to bring another aid,

that never sweated

in the cupped palms of a lover

and grew wrinkled, old,

alone.

pity that heart,

battered and befuddled,

deprived of love

by love once lost,

that never knew mankind

nor humanity–

that heart

that ticked and tocked

for want of other occupation

and then, gears grown thirsty

and beset by rust,

one day

stopped.

The Googlot

We never had a Googlot in the village, but we learned about them at Wikademy. Mom said that if she got some more clients, we could consider buying one, but I knew that there would never be enough clients in our small town, so I built my own. It wasn't long, I guess, before the CR showed up and took it away, but by then, we were already so used to it that I didn't see any way of living without one. So, when I saw one standing at a Magna-rail stop one day, I woke it up and grabbed its hand and led it quickly to the blink gate in the McDonalds by the depot. Bush! Mom was mad when she figured out what I had done, but when I told her that the neighbor had taken a look at it and wiped it clean, she calmed down a bit and even started to smile a little. I think she had really always wanted one, but she had grown up around laptops and clear-boards, so she still wasn't really used to any of the newer Applied Ingenuity software. I mean, they had robots and stuff back when she was a kid, but it was like they weren't even alive. They couldn't think or carry on a real conversation or anything. They just kind of sat there and repeated programmed phrases or fulfilled repetitive tasks, and they were always breaking down or having to recharge. That was before Takashi and Sandhi came up with Rejoints and Plaskin-- I just can't believe they used ball bearings for so long or that they were able to work when every screen had scratches all over it. Bush... Doesn't make sense at all...

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Also, for those of you interested in gaming, 3D graphics, and/or artificial intelligence, this is an interesting video. There is one swear word and an animated female android who is never fully naked but is pretty close to it (privates and breast covered up though). Anyway, a really interesting look into potential issues in the future of artificial intelligence.

To Peter and Back Again

That is, in fact, a monkey in a sweater.

We arrived in St. Petersburg (henceforth, Peter, as it is referred to in Russian) on Thursday after a rather enjoyable train ride where all the Russians stared at the loud Americans for seven hours straight. We, of course, felt very flattered that others thought us so fascinating as to pay so much attention to us. We were supposed to stay at a hostel that night, which, if we had been in Western Europe, would have meant we spent the night with a bunch of backpackers, young tourists, and generally interesting people. Unfortunately, Peter didn't get the memo or something, because we walked in and it was fully of forty-five-year-old ex-cons in wife-beaters. We had joked before arriving that we would end up in some hole-in-the-wall place, one where there's a creepy guy in the corner who just stares at you and doesn't ever say a word. We coined the phrase "Kyrgyzstanian in the corner" based on its alliterative quality rather than as any statement about Kyrgyzstanians, who are some of the nicest people ever. Anyway, we didn't exactly have the "Kyrg in the corner" in mind when we got there, but it soon became much more relevant. Most of our new ex-con friends were pretty inebriated and didn't give us much of a problem, but there was one excessively friendly one who insisted on telling us that the Kyrgyzstanian in the other room had stabbed someone the week before, and the Kyrgyzstanian in the other room insisted on yelling at us. So, we decided that there wasn't reason to find out whether the rumor about the "knife fight" (as the friendly one put it) was true and ventured out to find somewhere else to stay.

Catching Up

Street art!

It has been a while since I've written, so this will likely include a lot. I think the last time I wrote, it was the day before I went in for my first day at my internship, so I guess I'll start from there. I'm working for the Gorki Institute of World Literature in their Folklore Department, and that's been a real joy so far. The Institute itself is a research branch of the Russian Academy of Science, so they really don't do much in the realm of bachelor's degress or anything like that, but they have classes for PhD students, and as I understand it, they have a good number of interns who are doing research to get their Masters degrees as well. Anyway, the people there are really nice and really experienced in their fields. The lady that we work with most closely is Yelena, and she is possibly the kindest human being I've met in Russia so far. She is super accommodating, and it seems like most the time, her objective is to help us to accomplish whatever we are working towards personally, whether that's in research, sightseeing, or anything else. She has been super helpful in getting stuff lined up for my research, and  we've been learning a ton each day about some of her interests, like Russian folk music and ritualistic traditions among various Russian groups. The first day, we got to watch and listen to some old Siberian songs, and that was a real treat. I sang some Georgian folk music last semester with some good friends, and it reminded me of that. Anyway, since then, we've been learning all about the Russian calendar, holidays, funerary traditions, and foods-- just to name a few things-- and it has really opened my mind to understanding a lot of things that were, before, a "dark forest," as the Russians put it. I am really loving the subject material, and I'm excited to get into some translation work over these next few days. We're going to be translating Russian articles into English for publication in Folklorica, a journal of Slavic literature and folklore. In any case, I am stoked.

Thoughts on the Metro

new words

are heavy on my unwilling tongue:

predubezhdéniye. 

prejudice.

taková zhízn.

"das jus' how it is."

other words come easier--

a PRAYER on my lips:

lyubóv, dobrotá.

love, kindness.

But to them i am only a color.

am i zimbabwe or cameroon?

it does not matter because

to them

i am only a color.

the moscow air is

   cold...

do they think 

that i don't feel 

it already?

sticks and stones, man,

stick and stones.

but they don't have to say 

anything

for the words in their eyes 

to hurt me.

what have i done

to deserve

THY enmity?