Maddy's Blog

Update on story

My original story blog Imaginary year is done. I'm not sure if there will be any more stories at all. Therefore, I'm going to take this opportunity to tell you about my excitement for the upcoming holiday...Halloween. I know it's not a "real" holiday, but it's one of my favorite days. Who could want anything more than to dress up silly, along with their friends, and go out to parties? It's fun to act like a fool every now and then.

This year I'm going to be Marilyn Monroe. I have the white dress, the wig, the shoes...but I don't look exactly like her. I don't know why, but maybe it's because I have black eyebrows and the wig I purchased is white-blonde. The wig also kind of makes me look like George Washington.

This however, is the least of my concerns. I'm just hoping that everyone that's coming to visit and all of my friends, family, etc., have a good time on this day. It's going to be great...I'll probably go trick or treating, but I'm not exactly sure.

Feral Hypertext...a response to this

I'm not sure I would have described hypertext as feral. In a sense it is wild and out of control, but is this a thing to be criticized or embraced. So much are people used to the standards that we and past people have set that we do not appreciate the "wildness" of things others create. The web is a perfect example of where people are becoming increasingly comfortable with stepping outside of boundaries that society has set. People are no longer worried about what should or should not be put out there for the public to read, they just know that they have something they're interested in that they feel the need to share with the rest of the human population.

Walker describes her viewpoint in this excerpt:
"What I would like to emphasise here is that the concept of
intertextuality and much other late twentieth century critical
theory expresses an idea of texts as unruly and fundamentally
beyond discipline. Much hypertext research, on the other hand,
attempts to find ways to discipline and tame our thoughts, at the
same time as its admits that our mind works associatively and that
there are multiple ways of viewing connections in texts."

I'm not sure what I gained from reading this essay. Her perspective showed that she in some ways embraces the changes in literature on the internet - her use of flickr and other web sites - but also that she does not like the idea that hypertext, especially in literature, is getting out of control.

This is just my understanding, though, and I'm not positive that I completely understood this essay. But, I do embrace the feral examples she used and enjoy the un-standardized use of hypertext today...especially in Wikipedia.

Jill Walker's blog

Jill Walker's blog always has something to offer in her entries. She touches on serious topics, but also likes to talk about lighter issues. The entries also always seem to show her personality and ? sense of humor. In a sense, you could say, many of her entries show a playful side to serious issues.

Here's a link to one of her entries that I found amusing: Winter's here

It demonstrates her worry over time constraints and also relates her time as department head to the length of time for a pregnancy.

She also seems to be serious and playful in her criticisms. An entry about another author's game theory ideas was at the same time hyper-critical in criticizing men for relating mother's/women to computers, but at the same time an amusing/playful way to criticize the author's work. This entry can be found at:The game system as mother

I thoroughly enjoy reading about people's every day lives in their blogs. It's amazing what people say and how what they say shows their personality, whether it be serious or playful.

Art and playfulness

Art has many settings and forms. The type of artwork I am most attracted to is art that is on the not-so-serious side. Many times artists, including painters, authors, etc., seem to continuously compose/create things relating to tragedy. To me this is taking the easy way out...it's always easy for people to focus on the bad things that happen instead of the good. In this way many art forms lack the playfulness that people crave.

When browsing the web site Rhizome, a web site providing artists' with a medium for communication, I found a piece of artwork that I found to be playful...exactly the kind of art and literature that I am interested in. The artist uses human silohuettes and a projector to create a fun, playful smattering of shadows.

A direct link to the story: "Shadows out of time"

Response to Zimmerman blog

When someone uses interactivity to appeal to readers, I like to think of this as a game. A playful game no-less.

Many blogs we looked at over the course so far have allowed us to look at a "comic strip" or "story" and decide what would happen next. To me this type of story is a game and due to the fact that many are bored with reading traditional stories, it can be seen as taking a playful approach to something that used to be more simple.

In the excerpt we read online from Eric Zimmerman's book titled, "Narrative, Interactivity, Play and Games," he describes the relationship between these four things. He used examples to relate narratives, interactivity, play and games to each other, to stories, etc. One particular example he used was Ms. Pac-Man, describing the conflict between the elements in the game.

His ideas were sound arguments and melded the four things into one "idea" quite successfully.

Here's a link to the site: Eric Zimmerman

Update on story blog

I wasn't sure which fictional blog to update everyone on, so I decided to skip the Onion. Not much changes have happened on that web site, except it may have become a little more crude each day...and more entertaining.

So to recap, the other blog was titled Imaginary Year and was in its fifth "book" or year. The last entry on the blog was created September 22, 2005, a day after I looked at the site for the first time. It is the end of book five.

This entry focuses on a conversation about life being too complicated, and how people need to simplify their lives. It offers a good discussion about how people are too willing to try and glamorize their lives, rather than figuring out what they truly need and want out of it.

I really liked all of the entries from book five that I had a chance to read. It kept me extremely captivated and hopefully others will find it interesting when they happen to randomly come upon it.

Update on Raed in the Middle Blog

I've tried many times to access the Raed in the Middle site, but it's no longer working. The first time I tried to access it in September after I had put the link on my blog, I read an entry about how the author was no longer able to keep a running blog because of some of the comments that people had put up. I'm not sure if his blog was censored or if he chose for some reason to quit writing. I think it might have been the former and not so much the latter.

The other link to Iraq War today, however, was up and running as usual. I found a great link to a blog written by an embedded journalist. I read for a while about all of the trials he went through to get back to Iraq and how expensive it is to actually go through with it. It's really neat to see what he had to say about the experience thus far (this is his second time being over there). The link to his site is: Michael Yon: Online Magazine

Update on Lazy Ways

When I first identified my buddy blog - The Lazy way to success - I felt I had nothing in common at all with the writer. I think I may have pre-judged the author. While reading the entries from the past few weeks I realized that this person isn't at all what I thought he was. I think he is just an ordinary man trying to tell people how enjoyable life can be when you take it easy. He also has some helpful advice and funny quotes on his blog. He frequently talks about current issues - spoke of the U.S. Open and Andy Roddick's failure to win and also gives some good relationship and "finding your calling" advice. I especially liked this quote that he had on his blog: "There are no wrong notes on the piano, just better choices." I guess I'll have to check it out a little more often to see what he has to say.

Carnet de Voyage

I wasn't sure about this book when I first picked it up at the bookstore. But, I knew after reading the first ten pages or so I was hooked. I absolutely loved the whole thing. The way he illustrated everything he saw - if he really did see all of it - was really neat. You felt like you were traveling along with him. I actually think this may have been what helped remind me that I need to study abroad before graduation...whenever that may be.

I enjoyed the parts with the most detailed drawings the best. For example the scene of him standing on the terrace when he arrived back in Marrakesh was extremely remarkable. The date of this entry was April 6, 2004.
Other things I especially enjoyed were the random thoughts he included, for example in his April 14 entry when he was on a hike in the woods and was brought back to a memory of floating down the Sandy river on his back.

The whole graphic novel idea is really appealing to me and I would like to read more stories/books like this someday soon.

We have received another letter from Elvira Fulch. It was sitting on my desk when I got to the Statesman office. I'm not sure who left it there, but I'm thinking it was UrS TruLEe. I have just one thing to ask in reply to this letter - Do you read the Outdoors section at all? Here's what she had to say today.

Reaction to other fictional blog entries

I really think that Dayna's fictional character choice was really honest. It's very true that everyone has both good and bad thoughts and always have to make a choice of which one to go with. It's not always easy to be candid with thoughts that you know that other people might not find acceptable, no matter how honest they are. Her choice of pictures - the angel and the devil were very appropriate and cute, too.
A link to her entry:
We're Dayna's good, bad and always ugly
I also really liked Andrea's idea of a goddess. I thought it was really creative and that she has a very unique style of writing - it pulls you in. I'm excited to read what her 'character' has to say next.
A link to the entry: Why be a normal mom?

Here's another picture of me, my mom and sisters. We were spending the week at the lake this summer with some family. They thought it would be cool to take a picture of us sitting facing the right next to the water. I think it's pretty cute.

Miss Fulch really wants to be published each week in the Statesman. She seems to have plenty of time to write to us, so maybe we should just publish some of her stuff as a guest column. Otherwise I'm thinking she should just apply - I don't think she's working at another paper. It would take up too much time to sit and write us letters each day. Here's the first one from this week.

Where I spend my days, or most of them

Due to the fact that I'm working most of the day when I'm not in school, I thought I'd share a little bit of that with everyone. Here are pictures of the places I work...or try to.

The Statesman. My work space at The Statesman is kind of all over the place. I'm usually never in the same spot, but if I am, I'm there for a long time. Yesterday I helped some key folks take pictures of all the editors. I put them up above or next to their "work" schedules - or when they'll be in and out of the office. We all had a lot of fun with it - we weren't in a serious mood yesterday.

Ah...the Engineering office. I've worked here for about four years. I absolutely love it. My boss and I listen to oldies on the radio all day - to drown out the choir singing across the hall. I have my own little space and it's never that clean, but to me it's organized. My computer is a little dated...it takes up about half of my desk.

At home I have a desk, but I prefer to work on the brown couch in the living room while watching TV. Sometimes I'll sit at my desk, but that's only when my desk chair doesn't have piles of clothes on it from frantically getting ready for school each day.

Hot Lava

I have a little bit of a control issue when it comes to getting mad. I'm the kind of person who is generally in a good mood and has a high amount of energy all of the time. But, when something gets me mad...it gets me pretty mad.

I'm a little bit like a volcano - it always starts out as something small and then KA BOOM - I've gone into spazz mode.
About 10-15 minutes after the eruption I'm usually back to my usual self; laughing, joking, carrying on. If I'm not back to my "normal" self in this amount of time, I'm usually pretty mad about something and won't shake it right away.

I don't know if you would classify this as being moody and termpermental or just being a spazz.

I guess the reason I'm thinking about this is that it doesn't really always solve things for me to explode...sometimes I think I need to put a lid back on the mountain and be dormant for a while.