Thlogger's Remorse

Thlog me all night long

Group presentation might be my least favorite word in the english language. 

A: I really don’t like group projects.

B: I really really don’t like presentations.

Both of these things make me quite nervous in practice. I have never liked group projects because I never feel comfortable being represented by somebody other than myself, and I don’t like representing anybody other than myself. Since during a group project both of these things are happening at the same time, I generally don’t care for them. That being said, this one went pretty poorly. I am kind of surprised that we were in danger of going over time. Each slide took a lot longer than I thought it was going to. I thought that everyone did a pretty good job; my favorite one was the one about flow or something. I really liked their medium, prezi, I had never heard of it before this class, and although it looked kind of hard to use, I might look into it for future presentations. I also liked how they used candy to keep the audience engaged. Their questions were super hard though. That three word one was crazy. Whoever answered that one earned the starburst. Looking back the one I remember the most was the one about semicolons. I think it’s because I was jerking myself off the whole time for knowing all of the semicolon rules beforehand, even the list one(see there I go again). I didn’t love the hedged language one because they made it seem like you should always use it. Like when poor Jonathan Bruning asked what to do when stating a fact and the chief shut him down. Now, I am a pretty pluralist guy(nothing is certain/other hogwash), however, sometimes it just makes for better writing to pretend like you know what you are doing. Do I know what I am doing? Hell no. Does my reader need to know that? (see previous answer). People are more likely to question what I am saying if I hedge my language, which can be a good thing yadda yadda, but if you make a strong case and pretend to be competent more people are likely to believe you, which is usually what you are going for in a thesis-based essay. Another side of the pro-hedge argument is that people could disagree with you if you don’t hedge your language. To me, that’s not a bad thing; at least they form an opinion of it. I would rather have someone read something I wrote and think I’m an idiot or be offended than come away from it bemused. I suppose that’s my rant for the week. I still thought that the presentation itself was fine, just disagreed(at least I remember what they said) with the content presented.

Thlog Me

Thlog Me

WP3 is over a with that coms relief. I was honestly very excited about WP3, but the scheduling of it killed my available work time on it. The end result was a half baked idea that turned into a quarter baked WP3. Not super thrilled about it to be honest. This was the first WP3 where I actually could stand peer reviews. I think it was my group rather than the WP though. I don’t know why it is but I absolutely hate peer reviews. I can consciously understand that they are of tremendous value to us writers; with that said, they make my skin crawl. I remember doing the peer review of WP2 and someone was reviewing my essay, yet I had already finished theirs. I was just sitting their actively thinking of ways to discreetly board a plane to Tunisia. It is an awful quality that I have, but anyway yeah this peer review wasn’t nearly as bad. Moving on to the portfolio, I am really looking forward to some of it, I am really really not looking forward to some of it, and I know that I will end up messing it up gloriously. This has failure written all over it from my perspective. The revisions and reverse outlines I will probably do aggressively mediocre on; however, the meta-congnative reflection will fail oh so gloriously. Since it doesn’t have a strong base and we are encouraged to be informal, I see my future self losing touch with the root of the essay almost instantly. What I think will be this wise, smart, funny, clever, eye-opening, and thoughtful reflection will turn into this kaleidoscope with sparks of  bright substance, overwhelmed with browns and grays of nonsensical, ass-upidy(hypen?), drivel that will drive anything of meaning from it. Maybe I will write an outline for it. I don’t think it will exactly help me, per se, but it might help remind me that I am not Douglas Adams or Andrzej Sapkowski. It will be kind of cool to see how it turns out though. I can honestly say as of right now I have no idea what it will be about, which is kind of exciting. All this said, the reflection is the part which I am really looking forward to. I think it is because I am a narcissist(like most of us) and am looking forward to finally being able to write about the only thing that I am truly passionate about:myself.(<—-72% sarcasm)

A Thlog in the Machine

This(last, sorry it's late) week in writing class we talked mostly about WP3 which is a cool idea. I am having a hard time trying to make it interesting. I was reading through lots of the other student's PB3As for PB3B and what really stuck out was that for those who did option 1(most people), everyone's essence was the content of the scholarly article that I read. It would be really interesting to see another take on the essence of the article. When we went over the essence during that activity in class other examples of essence were like sources and citations, but more of the stuff is about IMRAD things. I think that I am going to try and do option 3 for my WP3, but if I do end up doing option 1 I think I will try to do something interesting for my essence. My definition of essence can only describe the content of the work however,  I think that your(Zac) definition is different than mine and I am trying to figure out exactly what is so I can have some fun with it. Honestly, I will probably come to class tomorrow with 3 poorly put together rough drafts of different ideas and re-pitch them to you. I know that the whole idea of PB3A was to pitch you these ideas; however, I really just didn't have a good grasp on the idea of PB3A when I wrote it, sorry. Now that I do, all these segments of ideas are forming that could potentially work together and form a somewhat coherent WP3. For option 3 I think I am going to write either a fable about writing a fable, or a ballad about writing a ballad. If I do option 1 I think I will throw some somewhat shady ideas at the wall and see if they stick. Who knows what will happen. But it the essence that I extract from the piece will definitely not be the content of the work. I going to look into more niche disciplines and try to find any unique techniques that they use and extract them from the scholarly article. The only real problem with that is then I don’t see the point in picking any one article. If all I am doing is dissecting the technique of the article  and extracting the essence, then ignore the content(mostly) which seems off. Anyways, we’ll see what happens; I hope it works.

PB#A

                                                                                                        PB#A

Older Genre: Now, I know that you weren’t thrilled about the whole “ballad” idea, but I think that it fits into the older generation genre. Specifically I would be doing a broadside. They were like 16th century newspapers that we hung on the street. They have a big picture on them that accompanies a little song. They give the tune that the song is supposed to be sung in, and the good ones are quite scandalous. I understand that identifying the characteristics of the audience might be hard because since the audience hasn’t been alive in a while but I’m willing to put in the work to research exactly what the audience was like. If that is a no-go for whatever reason, I do have a backup for the older generation genre. I think it would be fun to write a super-market tabloid. They have always kind of interested me because I don’t understand them at all. Who reads them, are they held to any journalistic standard, and how they get their stories. I think it fits into the assignment pretty well and would but fun to write. Other topics I can think of are very doable but awfully boring.

For the younger genre, I was thinking of doing something like a board game. I understand that a board game isn’t exactly a textual genre but boardgames instructions are. If I make good enough instructions I think I can do a good job of relating the essence of my article and analyzing the audience a purpose etc. This is kind of a stretch I realize, but I think I could do a good job with it. Other ideas are more tech-y since when I think of young kids today I think of tech. App descriptions, pewdiepie videos, and apple terms and conditions all pop into my head when thinking about writing a genre for young people. These are iffy genres at best though. Another solid idea I had was act/sat prep stuff or AP questions. I could write up AP questions that has to do with my topic or I could write a act/sat prep guide about my topic. 

Topic:

To be honest I am still a little confused on what the topic is supposed to be like. We are supposed to extract the “essence” of the scholarly piece then use that essence as the base for our new genres. However, to me, the essence of a scholarly piece can really only be the content of what’s within. So if i’m wrong about this, then please correct me because I have no idea. Moving on, unless otherwise instructed, I will be using the content of the scholarly piece as my essence. As such, I want my article to be broad enough for me to write a ballad on, yet playful enough to make into a board game. Marine biology keeps popping into my head because I can easily enough write a ballad about life under the sea, and I can relatively easily make a board game that teaches the players about sea life or takes place under water. If I can not do either of those genres, then I will have to change my topic probably. If I have to do super market tabloids and AP questions, I might choose an article that has to do with divorce. I could write a super market tabloid about the divorces of celebrities, and write a statistics questions and a literature question that has to do with divorce. Once I figure out the genres that I am doing definitively, then I will choose a topic that fits into those genres effectively. That shouldn’t be to hard.

If all else fails, I’ll just write a ballad about writing a ballad which fits under Option 3(self-referential genre). I really want to write a ballad.

Captains Thlog #6

November 1 2015:

We have gotten the prototype of WP2 up and running. It is not yet quite finished but we seem to have a handle on the situation. The engineers are having some trouble devising a thesis that means anything but drivel. I am sure that they will eventually figure it out, but without the thesis, it is hard to construct the pieces in a cooperative way. Right now they are barely being held together by nibidium oxide, but that won’t work once we enter the portal.

November 2 2015:

Alright, we have a thesis. We have the idea the WP2 is trying to prove; however, it is a little bit wacky. The head engineers decided to try to do something a little bit unorthodoxly, and although it works, all of the pieces in the essay don’t quite fit into the thesis all that well. We will see how it turns out. Although I do have to agree with them that it is at least interesting, I don’t know how well it work once we enter the portal.

November 3 2015:

We have found a second source for WP2. It is an interesting article that will work effectively work for the prompt. However, although the second source fits the prompt well, it does not fit in with the thesis as well as the other source. We are trying to debug this problem but it is proving challenging. I am starting to further question the idea of making the thesis a separate being from the prompt. It makes the essay more interesting but less well constructed. It is above my pay grade to question these decisions, but I think that I have a right to know what the hell is going on in my own ship.

November 4 2015:

This is the day. This is the day the WP2 enters the portals. Days of hard work have gone into this essay and they have all culminated to this moment. One word to describe my emotions right now: nervous. WP2 is an essay. WP2 is an essay whose contents are pleasurable to the eye. However, I am very nervous that WP2 will backfire when it goes into the portal. We do not know what is on the other side. To make something that has the potential to backfire easily when going into an unpredictable environment seems irresponsible. Those fat cats up top don’t care about us. They just care about their own ego. They want to win this battle rather than prevent a war. I cannot agree with this. We should have played it safee instead of going for the kill. Now it’s to late; today’s the day that the battle begins. Let us hope to God that we come out the other side alright.

November 5 2015:

We are in the portal. It’s horrible. Before the first paragraph even got through the portal it was already ripped apart. The flux matrix calculator that was supposed contain the thesis and be the brain of the essay broke down instantly. It caused WP2 to backfire and start attacking our men. To date. WP2 causes heavy casualties within our ranks. The ambiguity of the topic working together with the specificity of the questions decimated our vanguard and destroyed our right flank. I knew the risk when I undertook this mission but I had no idea the amount of destruction that would follow. We should have played it safe. This is the consequence of our hubris. This is our sin, now we must accept our judgment. We can only hope that He is merciful. 

Ze moves du Bob Ross

Bob ross has a very distinct style. His voice is a soft as a whisper yet as shard as a frog-snake.
He always tells the viewer how to mix the colors and what instrument to use when actually painting. As he paints he typically says not only how to paint as he does but also why to paint like that. For example, when he paints the mountains he says to use more paint on the top and then blend the paint as you move down the mountain. Then, he gives the reason that as your vision goes down the mountain it is obscured more and more by my fog and other things. This helps the reader not only paint better, but also understand why painting this way is better. Also his soothing voice makes is seem that Bob Ross isn't telling them how to paint but rather giving advice on how to paint. This distinction makes him seem less bossy and more relatable.


Disney thing.

I liked this video. It was cool to see how parts of sleeping beauty were made. I especially liked the part about how it was like a symphony made up of members that could all be solo artists. It was cool.
However, I understand that the important part of the video was the part about the tree. In this allegory, the tree is the scholarly idea and each of their versions of the tree are supposed to be different genres, different ways of capturing the tree using their own ideas.

online class journal maybe?

I hate my WP@. It is terrible. Estimated grade is a 6.5. I found it incredibly hard to write a paper that had an interesting thesis, fulfilled the prompt, and was 5-6 pages. I had no idea how to do it, and I think my paper struggles from lack of focus.

things I did well: I had a more specific thesis from before, I had shorter paragraphs, and I had more concise sentences as well.

Things I didn't do well: I have terrible structure in my essay as well as terrible flow. My paper seems disjointed as well as lazily written. I shoehorned in stuff from the course reader that doesnt necssarily fit into my essay just to fit the prompt. My tone and style are inconsistent throughout the essay.


Q2:
The one that helped me the most was that my paper was too content oriented. another one that was good was how to fit the course reader into my essay.  These helped me identify what was wrong with my paper and also gave me a solution to the problem

PB@B

I don’t know exactly what this is supposed to be like to be honest. An essay would be strange since we would just be listing the 5 examples with fluff between them; however, a list seems strange as well since it wouldn’t really be writing—and this is a writing class. So don’t judge whatever I write below to much since I am thoroughly confused. 

The move “Introducing “standard views”” was last seen on page 3 of the introduction to Spaces For Writing where it is written, “Often, when people talk about beginning a writing project…”.

The move is approximately 3-14 words long or 15-42 letters(no spaces). It is known to legitimize the claim of the writer, and to introduce new ideas to the reader that have a seemingly strong foundation(because it’s not yours). If you see this move, please run for your life and sacrifice a family member if you have one that you don’t like that much; it is believed to be very armed and very very dangerous.

Move: “Introducing an Ongoing debate”

Technique: An advanced move which grants the writer the power to quickly show the reader the two sides of the debate. In an argumentative paper, hopefully the writer makes it clear which one is better. You must use the weight of one argument to springboard that power to the opposing arguments.

Evidence: On page 7 of the introduction to Spaces for Writing, it states “In college classrooms, some instructors will encourage you to compose within the rules and expectations of specific academic disciplines….and some will want you to experiment wildly.” 

Requirements: Has to display to completely opposite viewpoints and it is recommended that it favors one side vs the other. For example, on page 7, the rules professor is dressed sharply but brutally boringly while the experimentation professor is dressed like an extra from the rocky horror picture show. Since I think the audience of this piece is college-aged kids, the fabulous one is very much favored.

^^These two moves are almost at half of my word count so I will now proceed to tone it down.

Move:”Indicating who cares”

Location Page 13 Writing Spaces 

Quote: “If we hadn’t all been willing to work with others’ suggestions, we would have had a very limited and unsatisfactory book!”

Me: Their claim in this little section of the comment was that learning to write and communicate effectively is important. This quote is saying why it is important: to work together to achieve something that you could not have done on your own.

Move:”Signaling who is saying what”

Location: Page 18 Writing Spaces

Quote:”The renaissance writer Leon Battista Alberti had strong ideas about how images told a story”

Me: Not much to say. Almost word for word what is in the appendix. They just told the reader who was saying something.

Move: Not really sure if this counts per se, but there is a list of transitions in the back of the appendix sooooo, I’ll count that as a move…”transition”

Location: Page 14 Writing spaces 

Quote:”consider this:”

Me: The appendix classifies this as a “example” transition. I think I agree with that. In the example from the text they do use consider this as a precursor to an example. 

No appendix: The leap of faith

The reason why I chose to use Writing Spaces as my article is twofold. 1: I am really just a rather child to would rather read comics than wordy things, and B: that I think that since they are a comic and it does include pictures it makes it so they have a much greater move set when compared to pieces with just words. When the background of your words is illustrations rather than whitespace, it gives you options.

Move: Banana Hammock

Description: When the actual words are ambiguous or vague; however, the context of the writing is given in the background picture of the comic. In other words, when the words are read alongside the picture that is included behind him, their meaning becomes clear.

Example: This is used in a least half of the frames in the comic.

Move: Hidden Guava

Description: This is when the writer seemingly defines a correct solution space within the context of the topic, just to show how this solution space breaks down when pressure is applied to it. More simply, the define a set of rules, just to break them later to make a point.

Example: Page 5: “Our main goal is to help you think about….of course, the rules can differ depending on the situation.”

Move: The Shrink ray

Description: When the writer puts himself into his work. This one is pretty specific, but the writers of this comic do it quite a bit. It is used to make the situation seem more real and give them credibility.

Move:Reality vs Fiction

Description: When the author plays with the fact that our expectations of reality can often bleed into the fictional space when we read and our mind slips further and further from reality. The authors use this when they compare the animated version of them to the photo version of them.

Move: Repetition in space

Description: Within a series of image, the main focus of each image is the same, while the background changes. This gives a sense of meaningless and futility to the background. They use this once at the end of the comic, but I think it is cool.

thlog 4

I think the thing that will stuck with me the most is all the stuff about the research in the library. I didn’t really find the activity to be particularly entertaining; however, odds are, that I will have to research a good bit of stuff in the library throughout my college career. The ability to manage a search engine is a key tool in the research process. I feel like that is a sad reality of adult life. In school, we are taught these grand ideas;however, in real life most of what we do—when school is over— is the tedious part of school that we try to ignore. So I always try to identify parts of school that exemplify the next level, and I think that library research is one of them. Another interesting idea that came out of the library research thread was the two ways to search. You can either have a specific idea in mind and use the search engine to expand on that idea or you can have a very big/general idea and refine it with the search engine. Both of these ways of doing them are interesting, but the fact that you can do either using the search engine is pretty neat. Another thing from class that I thought was interesting are the grammar lessons that we will have to do in groups. Like I have said before, I think that grammar is kind of interesting to look at. I don’t really like grammar tests or anything, but the actual study of grammar for use in my writing is interesting. So I am very interested to see when the day comes that we actually present what all the grammar rules are like. Considering that I don’t even know what hedged language is, it should be quite informative.

PB@A

My article: “COMPLETIONS OF (epsilon)-DENSE PARTIAL LATIN SQUARES” by Padraic Bartlett.

Part 1:

There are things that these articles have in common. Both the real scholarly article and the fake one have introductions. The introductions serve to both educate the reader in the subject matter that follows and introduce the reader to the claim being made. However, the real scholarly article also contains a history sub-section with the introduction section. This gives the reader even more background into the subject matter. A history sub-section is probably needed because the specialization of these papers are so specific that even people within the field are not expected to know everything within the field to this degree. Since this article is a math article, the introduction also lists a series of conjectures and theorems that will be used or—in extraordinary articles—proved in the paper. Conjectures are ideas that have not been proved yet but are theorized by great scientists that came before.Theorems are facts that have been proven by previous scientists. In my article, the section after the introduction is “The proof”. At the start of it, he states the fact that he wants to prove, the he proves this fact using the previously established theorems in addition to original ideas and logic. This is very different from the computer generated paper, which had no logical flow or claim to prove. The only part after the proof is references where the author cites where he got his theorems as well as his background in the field. The computer generated paper had a reference page as well; however, when if you look closely you will find that it is filled with high-brow jokes instead of real sources.

Rhetorical Features:

The are both being made for a higher education level audience. The main difference is that while Dr. Bartlett’s paper is being made for people within his field, the computer generated one is made to confuse people who are not in the computer science field. The tone of both is scholarly, clear, and concise. They are both trying to make a claim, and an important part of any claim is the ability for people to understand it and follow it. In order to achieve this, the authors both try to make a very straightforward argument. Although the vocabulary of the argument is overflowing with words that would make the Mr. T shit himself, the actual logic behind the argument as well as the way the argument is presented are both relatively straightforward. As for visual literacy, they both use graphs or picture or such to further illustrate their arguments.

Part 2:

The specific aspects of the scholarly piece that struck me as the most important parts were the claim, data, and warrant. This is because they are the building blocks of any argument, this paper included. The claim tells the reader what the paper is trying to prove. In my article the claim is the theorem that he is trying to prove. He starts by proving three lemmas, assistant theorems, then uses these lemmas as well as outside theorems and critical thinking to prove his claim: any (epsilon)-dense partial latin square P containing no more than (gamma)n^2 filled cells in total is completable for (epsilon)<(1/12),(gamma)<(1-12(epsilon)^2/10409)(Bartlett 15). The data is the outside evidence(theorems, conjectures) that he uses to give credibility and legitimacy to his claim. The warrant is his use of the evidence to prove his claim. it is his own thoughts and it is the root of the paper.

Thlog Life

Just finished my WP#1, 'twas tough. Don't want to talk about it. The thing that is most drilled into my mind from class is the concept of freedom. Zac was talking about how some people found the freedom that we were given in the WP overwhelmed people. Personally I didn't see "That Much" freedom. There was more than a typical essay but less than what I would consider an overwhelming amount. However, the concept of being overwhelmed by freedom is interesting. I have felt this before. When I do I typically think:"What is freedom if not a prison that we created for ourselves that prevents us from following our destiny." I know it's a stereotypical angsty teen thought, but I think it's kind of an interesting one. We grow up in an environment that celebrates and glorifies freedom, yet there are times in our lives when we wish that someone would just tell us what to do and give us a sense of purpose. At least I do sometimes. Life is complicated; freedom further complicates it. "Give me liberty or give me death"(Patrick Henry I think.) "You can take our land, but you can never take our freedom."(Mel Gibson?) We love that shit. However, one would have a hard time arguing that life wouldn't be easier if our paths weren't pre-determined. To give some perspective, I would consider myself a libertarian politically. I can trace most of my political stances to the writings and ideas of John Locke, so don't call me a fascist. It's just sort of a strange though. Just like some of us were overwhelmed by the freedom that the WP provided, a lot of people(I think) are overwhelmed by the near-limitless freedom that life provides us. Sure, we don't have unlimited freedom anymore(thanks Obama), but we are told from birth that we can do whatever we want to do in life. The flip side is that some people don't know what the hell they want to do, I sure don't. It makes you question why we have this glorification of freedom in our society. I think that is is two-fold. One, selfishness: freedom gives us the right to be a dick, which we all want to be a dick sometimes. Two, hope(this is the more romantic version): looking into the stars and thinking that we are masters of our own destinies is a lot better than knowing that we will be remembered as the 17th best aglet-checker on our assembly line by the time we are 20(if our paths were determined). However, if you think of yourself in geological time, then our lives might as well already be over, with our fate sealed by death. No matter how/when we die it's going to happen a certain way. No one can really change how they are going to die since the process of dying happens only once. It's like trying to change how you are going to wake up tomorrow. Since you won't wake up tomorrow twice, you can't change the result because until you actually wake up the result isn't sealed into place. So once we accept that we can't change how we are going to die, we accept that our method of dying is predetermined. Working backwards from that through induction we might realize that our whole life is predetermined. We can change our past behavior the present time, but never our future behavior since it is yet to happen. What was I talking about again? Freedom I think? Well I think that's enough for now(heh).

THLOG10(binary)

I’m having a tough time writing this blog. All I can think about is Spongebob when he tries to  describe what he learned in boating school.

We studied genre’s a lot. We studied

rhetorical analysis a lot. I liked the genre 

generators quite a bit; they were interesting. 

We discussed WP#1, which I am still having 

trouble grasping. I don’t know if we are 

supposed to analyze the topic within the 

genre across the sources or analyze the 

genre through the topic across the sources. I don’t know if that made sense, but thats so be it. Ehhh, I’m sure I’ll manage. Ooo, I liked the writing tips and tricks, like the stuff with hyphens and dashes or the part about reading it aloud or the part about copying and pasting 3 times. //<—-run on sentence) I don’t how to punctuate that so I just used a commenting method from comp sci. Anyways, I have always kind of liked learning about grammar. Not exactly about the stuff like compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences, but rather little tricks that help you structure sentences with more variety. It reminds me of learning or gaining a new ability in a video game. Good fun. Lets see what else did I learn in boating school? I learned a lot of new vocal words for rhetorically analyzing something! Exigence, audience, ethos, pathos, logos, uhhh rhetorical discourse, I think thats it. My understanding of these words is spotty at best, but at least I will recognizes them and be able to form some sort of response to them in the future. So that’s good. 

P.S. I know the pic of spongebob is a little big, but I had a tough time simply getting it here. Beggars can't be choosers.

PB1B

The Plugging and the Chugging

We had our orders: Plug and Chug. Plug and Chug until we understand what the hell was going on. Simple orders when we set out, we didn’t know the hell we were getting into. Me, Colonel Mustard, and Sergeant Pepper have written over 1,000,000 * 10^-6 computer science papers in less than an hour, and we are writing more as we speak. They don’t seem to suspect our presence; our infiltration has gone unnoticed. Everything is going according to plan. It hasn’t been easy, but we have gathered the following information. However, I urge any readers to question if they want to continue reading. The words that follow are not for the feint of heart. If you despise the laughter of children or are allergic to cats, do not read on. This is your last chance to turn back. Alright, this is the information we have lost a lot of good men to obtain:

There seems to be a defined chain of command. First, there is the Abstract. This acts as the epidermis of their network. It covers the entirety of the paper but at a very thin level. It strips away all the complexities of the paper, and simply explains the fundamental idea of the behind it. Next is the Table of Contents. It is the male nipple of their network; we don’t know what it’s used for. It may be a hyperlink to webpage, or perhaps there are words hidden beneath it in either really small font, or written in the same color as the background. In our opinion, it cannot be trusted. Next is the introduction, the bellybutton of the network. It starts the flow of information in the essay—like the umbilical cord—however, it’s not very deep. It gives an outline of the paper, and tells the reader what to expect to the from the paper. The difference between the introduction and the abstract is that the introduction gives clues towards the structure of the paper, while the abstract only concerns itself with content. Next is the framework, followed by implementation evaluation— subcategories Hardware and Software and Experimental Results— then related works, and finally conclusion. I am to lazy to write blurbs for each of these; however, I am not to lazy to not write about how these pieces form a genre(wicked double negative action there). Simulation Terminated.

Now then, what I got from this genre generator was how you can have the proper skeleton of a genre, filled in with buzzwords and fancy punctuation, and still not fall into that genre. It might look like it belongs there, but it could still be nonsense. None of the papers I generated made a lick of sense, but they followed most if not all the conventions of a good research paper. To me, this says that a genre can’t be solely defined by its conventions. It is the conventions that form the skeleton of the genre, while the meat still defines it. 

Pandyland Comics: where dreams come true. Not for me. My experience in Pandyland was wading through tens of comics up to my hips in puke, vomit, and dead cats. As my mind was starting to close in on me, I realized that there seemed to be some sort of pattern developing. Each comic generally started with some sort of opening frame, followed by a transitionary frame, then finally followed by a conclusion. Each frame is animated and most had some sort of words associated with them. It is really quite simple. The interesting question that it raises: are these all that one needs to fit into the comic genre? My argument would be yes. It may not be on the same level as Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, but it is still a comic strip. This seems like an oversimplification, even to me, but I can’t poke any holes in it. However, this is a quite a contrast from what was found in the first genre generator, where although it may have fit into the skeleton, it failed to exemplify the genre. I think this means that even the process with which we analyze genres changes with the genre, which is something I never really thought about before. 

This brings me to my final topic, what do these websites tell us about genres? As I have said, I don’t think that these websites reveal an elaborate, definitive revelation about genres. Instead, I think they fit together, like a jigsaw puzzle, to form a slightly less blurry picture of what defines genre. They show that we have to use different tools to analyze each genre we look at, we have to look both at the format and the content of a genre to classify it, and we have to think logically rather than formulaically to define a genre….Buzzwords!!!

PB1

PB#1

Titles: The Science of Titles

Quick, things that I can see from my desk: Rubáiyat of Omar Khayyam, The Blazing World and Other Writings, The Tempest, Dune, Problem Solving with C++, Super Mario 3D World, Super Smash Bros, Probability, PHYS 3 Basic Physics UC Santa Barbara, and The Da Vinci Code. Those were all titles. Now, what do they have in common—besides being outrageously overpriced and displaying poor life choices? They’re short? They’re simple? Catchy? Maybe. Boring? Who’s to say; however, what I am here to say is that titles are cool. Not so much because of their actual “content” per se, but rather because every artist, author, director, journalist, blogger, and creator of any sort had to come up with one. It’s no easy task. Imagine, you pour thousands of gallons of blood, sweat, and tears into your creation, then you are forced to forced to describe it in ten words or less, its sole purpose to pique the interest of every plebeian whose vision happens upon it. It’s kind of insulting, yet everyone from Shakespeare to me had to title their written words. So, how did we do it? 

Well, as you can see, I went for the classic “boring research paper” model for this paper, it’s not final. It follows the age-old *a short, concise intro* : *a slightly more thorough explanations of the subject contained within the words written below this* spiel. I was taught by some teacher that it would make my writing look official. But, that is obviously not the only way to title anything. If you are writing a goosebumps story, you want to title to be simple, yet still haunt the reader into early adulthood. If you are painting a portrait, you either want to title it the person’s name or describe them in an exquisitely awkward way. If you are writing a song for Panic! at the Disco’s “A Fever you Can’t Sweat” album, you want the title to have nothing to do with the song, apparently. What I’m trying to say, is that titles don’t have to have a lot in common to still fall into the genre of titles. The conventions of a title: short, describes what it is, catches the eye(sometimes). These are their guidelines. Artists can either follow these in some capacity or completely ignore them, it’s up to them. That’s what is kind of interesting about analyzing titles as a genre. It is a very obviously defined thing: whatever is first seen by the viewer /reader/ listener. However, they are hard to get right. A good title has to simultaneously catch the eye and intrigue the owner of the eye—easy enough. The catch is that the criteria for this changes significantly per eye, and it is faux pa to lie blatantly in the title for some reason. What makes a title a title in short: has to be a short summary of the content it represents, while both catching the eye and piquing the interest of those who see it.

Blogspot/Mom..TheToilet'sBlogged/w2/dk/13/THLOG/#1/Oreos/Who Knows

Thlog: What really is a thlog. Is it really just a mix of a thought and a blog, or is it something more? Is a thlog only a pun created by teachers as an attempt to use an "internet" word to hold the attention of an ever-distracted population of youths, or rather a reflection of what we have become as a society? We might need thlogs. We don't need the pun per se but we do need the outlet. We are no longer defined as what we are, instead we are defined by what we appear to be. What does this mean you say?? Well my friends, what this means is that children these days don't even know what a handshake is anymore. They can no longer play heads-up 7-up because the positioning of the thumbs makes them think it’s a 3-dimensional Facebook like and their heads explode. Our country is going to s**t, and the so called “government” isn’t doing anything about it!!!!! If you are as outraged as I am, go to www.theendofAmericaasweknowit/childrenaredestroyingAmerica/halloweenoreosarethebestflavor.edu and sign the petition for the banning of children in non-virtual reality. Join us now seekers of the ONE truth, before it’s too late…

*Cough*, excuse me… I don’t know what came over me.

This week in class I really enjoyed the part about first order thinking vs. second order thinking. It really strikes a chord with me. In high school, I didn’t like writing. Not for any particular reason, I just wasn’t very good at it. I feel like thats a pretty common reason for not liking something. I remember, in high school, being afraid to write what I really felt. I learned to write enough crap in the proper way with good grammar and spelling, which let me get by in remedial english classes. I don’t think I have ever written anything that can be described as good, especially academically. Don’t get me wrong I have written some sweet text messages and IG captions, but academically, nada. Looking back, it think it was because I didn’t write what I wanted to, both because I didn’t think I was supposed to and I was scared to. Then, when I would look back at my rough drafts, I would see that they we garbáge(gar-BAH-jh)—P vs. NP for you math people— and get discouraged, knowing that whatever I did the essay would still be garbáge. So, the first-order and second-order thinking part was cool! It really spoke to me, because it not only showed me exactly what I was doing wrong, it showed me how those two previously worthless parts of my writing process could be fixed.

Blogspot/Mom...TheToilet'sBlogged../BlogPost#1/Blurb/AboutME

About Me. I am Dominic Pascal Kirby. I am from San Diego, the city from Anchorman. I don’t really like writing about myself. I'm pretty sure it's because it reminds me of job interviews, and I find it really hard to encapsulate myself in any meaningful capacity  on paper. Not that I’m particularly interesting, it just always feels like trying to describe the color blue to a blind person. You can tell him what things are blue: the sky, sapphires, etc. You could tell him the scientific definition of the color blue:Human eyes perceive blue when observing light with a wavelength between 450 and 495 nanometres(British guy from Wikipedia). These are true, but they don’t really help a blind person understand what the color blue. I’m not as metaphysically transcendent as the color blue; however, I am also not 300 poorly written words. I can tell you what I do: sleeping takes up roughly 1/3 of my life, school about 1/2, and the last 1/6 is spent trying to fend off the endless pursuit of boredom, etc. I can tell you how people see me: “Human eyes perceive Dominic as anything between a jovial goofball to a self-absorbed douche to a cynical phony to a complete weirdo depending on how long they have known him"(American guy from Blogspot). Although these thing are unfortunately true, but they don’t really tell you all that much about me. I suppose I could say how I spend that infinitely important 1/6 of my life. I like the ocean, surfing, spearfishing, etc. I like to travel; I’ve been to a lot of places. Ummm, I like music? I suppose that’s probably a given. Ooo I like math, especially the the fun little stuff they do at the top of it like the the prisoner’s dilemma and the the art gallery theorems oooh and P vs. NP. I really like P vs. Np. In fact I even annotated something in the first reading with a P vs. NP annotation. I also like putting “the” twice instead of once when writing about stuff I don't like writing about so ha! rebellion is a seductive mistress. 

Here’s a pic of me jumping off a playground at age 12:

Never mind, I can't get it to come here from Facebook, sorry.