Project 4 Ideas

For my fourth project I want to do something with the idea of lists and quantities trivializing our lives. I want to go around to several people in my dorm and have them list things that they own (Maybe the contents of their desk or their bookbag) then take a few pictures, one of themselves, and several of the things. Then I'm going to link it all together to where when you click on the description of the person, all that comes up is a list of meaningless items that they own. I might also fashion a story around the characters, I'm also contemplating having each person write a short personal description to go along with their list, but somehow skewing it in some way on the final project.

I also want to do something along the lines of mashing the personal description and list together in order to make a "personal" description of the person in the story. After class today I'm pretty sure I want to write a story, some kind of mystery (I like mysteries) involving Stalnaker Hall, since all the people will be coming from there. The story might deal with a renegade janitor planning to overthrow the honors office, and then some kind of conspiracy involving Mike Garrision, John Kerry, and zombies, because I think there should be something funny in there, while also using politically charged topics from around WVU to make it scandalous. Right now there are just some free floating ideas bouncing around in my head, but I have a basis of ideas right now.

Also I think I might do a narrative from different points of view. Something like that. Lots of ideas to sort through.

List Response

The things in my chemistry lab drawer:

10mL Beaker
50mL Beaker
Syringe w/ needle
Spin vane
Air condenser
Water Condenser
Round Bottom Flask
Conical Vial
Drying Tube
Craig Tube
10 Micro pipettes
4 Glass stirring rods
Erlenmeyer Flask
Cloth wipe
Strange chemicals.

Project Four ideas

Project four really makes me think. So far we've talked about Multimedia through images, sequences, even the underlying code behind all text, but this is almost looking at the human element of writing. Yes, there is an underlying code to all writing, but there is also a human, unpredictable element, and this is very interesting to me. An idea I have for the project is just to have a journal, and to get people to write in it when they're feeling the most emotional, then link the stories together to make some form of story. Something like that. The idea of a story written by multiple people really appeals to me, in one way because of what it makes us think about the author, and what it really means to be an author since we're kind of borrowing other's ideas when we write anyway.

Project 3 Final with Metatext

Couch Burning in Morgantown Reduced as Compared to Past Years


MBA Scandal Shocks Graduate Students


Bob Huggins Return to WVU Exemplifies the Mountaineer Spirit


Below are the translated texts after they've been passed through the "Joyce Algorithm"

Couch Burners Anonymous


Free MBAs


Huggstown


For this project I wanted to take three normal journalist-y texts and pass them through my invented "James Joyce Algorithm" (posted above). I did this for several reasons. Number one I thought that this project needed a way to be interconnected while also using some of the ideas we've used on earlier projects. Number two is that when I studied Joyce last semester (that's "English 272: Modern Lit" in case you all are wondering) his writing style seemed incredibly good to me, but I thought that his ideas were askew as to my view of the world. The main goal of the Joyce Algorithm (although this is not a bulleted point in the algorithm) is to take the neutral, tone of apathy he uses in Dubliners and spin a positive story with THAT voice. The three journalism stories are stereotypical and happy in tone and content, all leading to a very tidy conclusion (like any good news story). The Joyce translations, however, all are much more personal, and leave the reader to come to his own conclusions about the characters and the events in the story. This is in sharp contrast to the news story, where the author (me, of course, but with a very different voice) just tells the reader what to think.

A major portion of the Algorithm is devoted to the idea about an "epiphany," an idea I also sampled from Dubliners. The characters in the Joyce Translations all come to their epiphanies, and in many cases these epiphanies are just as negative as the epiphanies in Dubliners, but my characters all convienently forget their ephiphanies, because I don't believe epihpanies are important. In reality we all come to an epiphany almost every second of every day, it's how we respond to these realizations that seperate the people who live in a beautiful college town full or spirit, or a grey, dimly light city in Northern Ireland where the even the living are really the dead.

I also tried to contrast Joyce's style in my own writing by attempting to inject a theme of passion at the end of the story. An image of fire or flames ends all my stories, and I use this image to represent not the fires of hell, but the fire that burns inside all of us, pushing us to break out of the decay that can sometimes come into our hearts. The fire in my story doesn't destory, but instead tempers the characters' spirits, allowing them to face the sometimes cruel and unfair world.

In conclusion, the main point of the algorithm was to translate something initially positive into a slightly cynical or depressing voice, and then allow the reader to realize that the outcome of this story doesn't have to be negative. Although the voice changes, and the reader knows more details than the newspaper articles give, the characters can still be living in a positive place- A Morgantown where the fire in everyone represents everything good about human nature.

Project 3 Ideas/Draft

For my project 3 I'm spoofing Dubliners by James Joyce, using three shorts stories that take place in morgantown. I'm likely going to photocopy handwritten pages to put into the internet. For this I'm designing my own algortithm using "winter" "twilight" and a lot of epiphanies. (Like in Joyce). I will also make it a point to mention Ireland or politics in Ireland in every story, even though the stories won't be about Ireland at all--part of the "Joyce Algorithim"

The titles of the three short stories are:

1) "Couch Burners Anonymous"

2) "Coming Home: The Story of Bob Huggins"

3) "My Quest for an MBA"


The Joyce Algorithim will be dealing with the concept of the paragraph, and through that, the whole story.

so A) A set of rules apply to each story as a whole (for example, every story contains 3 epiphanies)

and B) Each paragraph will undergo a specific translation (every first paragraph will introduce the story as happening at twilight)

These two main points will work together to form two, normal, basically journalistic (word?) articles into comments about the "Modern City" similar to James Joyce.

I'm also planning on hand writing the TRANSLATED text and posting it as a scanned image, just because it's another form of translation that I feel works very well to try and represent some of the same ideas about decay and such as is seen in Dubliners.

"Heroes" Googlism

heroes is packaged for cooker by pascal rigaux

heroes is a more accessible album

heroes is the second theatrical movie that diane keaton has directed

heroes is the realization of a creative endeavor manifested by five individuals from southeast Michigan

heroes is just another dud fighter available for the n64 joining all the other fighters that are on the discount rack for under $19

heroes is the story of winkler

heroes is actually a concept album

heroes is an affiliate of children first

heroes is over apple fans demand nothing less than "insanely great"

-These aren't all of them (there were around five hundred), these were just the ones I liked, also some of them contradict each other, thought that was amusing.

Word picked in honor of return of NBC TV show "Heroes" that has stolen an hour from my life on every Monday night this year....oh, and my soul.

Translational Text

"There's no question about it. Wall Street got drunk -- that's one of the reasons I asked you to turn off the TV cameras -- it got drunk and now it's got a hangover. The question is how long will it sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments."

English--Lithuanian--Finnish--Catalan--Vietnamese--English

No doubt about it." Wall Street s'emborratxen - is one of the reasons why I asked to turn off the TV cameras - was a drunk, and now have a hangover. The question is how long is sober and not try to do all the tools of financial sophistication.

These beauteous forms,
     Through a long absence, have not been to me
     As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
     But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
     Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
     In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
     Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
     And passing even into my purer mind,
     With tranquil restoration:--feelings too                       
     Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
     As have no slight or trivial influence
     On that best portion of a good man's life,
     His little, nameless, unremembered, acts
     Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
     To them I may have owed another gift,
     Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
     In which the burthen of the mystery,
     In which the heavy and the weary weight
     Of all this unintelligible world,                             
     Is lightened:--that serene and blessed mood,
     In which the affections gently lead us on,--
     Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
     And even the motion of our human blood
     Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
     In body, and become a living soul:
     While with an eye made quiet by the power
     Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
     We see into the life of things.

English--Hindi--Sweedish--English


These beautiful forms,
Through a long absence, we are not
As the title scene of the blind:
But only one of many in the room, and the 'mid-religion
Locations and cities, and because
Hours fatigue, sweet sensation,
Blood, and felt with the heart;
Purer for my mind traffic,
With the restoration of peace: - Osecaj also
Unremembered happily: This, perhaps, is
Besides the impact, or less trivial
This is a good man to live the best part is,
She is, the name, unremembered and small did not work
Saosećanja of love. No, and the less I am convinced,
I present to them the other, dugovala can be
Jews of more than one aspect, that blessed mood,
Burthen ambiguity,
The tired and heavy tegova
The world did not understand that,
To easy - Dounloads was peaceful and blessed,
I love that leads us slowly --
The content of breathing
Blood of our human resources
Almost suspended, and we put them to sleep
In the body, and became a living soul:
Although the eye with quiet authority
Harmony, happiness and the power of deep,
We believe in the life of others.

Algorithm Response

This weekend the ballgame was a huge dissapointment. My friends and I planned a tailgate in the green lot, chock full of fried potatoes, cookies, and homemade pancakes on the grill. We were waking up very early to get there, so there would be plenty of time to go into the game. Early on our troubles started when we were unable to come up with sufficient funds to purchase the potatoes for frying, but we decided that it wasn't a huge deal; we still had the pancakes. Unfortunately, the griddle we had obtained was unable to function through the AC/DC adapter that we planning on using. No potatoes, no pancakes, and hardly any fun. Everyone that showed up was dissapointed, and we grudgingly headed to the game. The game, however, was almost as much of a letdown as the tailgate. Our team started well, but was unable to keep up the same level of play, and horrible coaching decisions near the end of the game left us relying on our inexperienced defence to secure the win. They were able to hold the Rutger's offence on four consecutive plays, but although we had won the game, everyone left feeling disgusted. A poor tailgate and a poor game (and Pat White with a concussion). One can only hope next week will be better.


Order 5 Travesty

This weekend the end of time to keep up the game, everyone left us relying
on our troubles started when we were unable to function the Rutger's offence
to function the Rutger's offence to come up was almost as much of a letdown
as the pancakes.

Project Two Final With Metatext

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My second project is a cross between a comedy and a mystery. I tell a narrative through the character of my WVU hat, although he never refers to himself as a hat, as far as the reader is concerned he is just a totally normal guy searching for his parents. This is important because the only clues the reader has to knowing the identity of the narrator are the multimedia elements of the project—the pictures and the video. This works to explode the conventional idea of the narrator and show that as writing progresses technologically, the need for these technological advances also increases. You wouldn’t want to read a whole mystery without knowing the main character was a hat, but without the integration of the video and images with the text (all in first person) it would be impossible to determine the identity of the narrator.
My project also emphasizes the idea of a sequence when writing, and it does this in several ways. First of all, it is a mystery narrative, so it progresses logically from beginning to end, although the reader does not know all the details of the story as he is hearing it, because the speaker in fact does not know all the details. The story is written as a sequence of journal entries, and each journal entry has a place on a map along with a date and a story specific map marker. Each journal entry then has links within it to give broader details on the story—pictures, videos, emails, and search results are linked unobtrusively from here. I wanted to emphasize the map, so instead of each journal entry linking to the next one, there is a link at the bottom to “return to table of contents,” symbolizing the need for the reader to understand that the story progresses in a specific order, even when details about the story are unclear.