Seriously, I didn't believe it. But then I saw a youtube video, and then I believed it. Because, if you see something, then it must be real. The scientists said that a "T-a-suarous Rex-I-cus" was invading the malls of South Vermont looking for sales in Macy's.

A concerned and obviously frightened shopper remarked, "It was just aweful. They came out of nowhere, eating and squashing everyone in there path. They saw the sales in went in for the kill. It was just awful carnage. The Horror. The Horror!"

Around the country, other have seen them. They travel in packs and were ridiculously nefarious. Game wardens around the country have released to basic depictions on what the perps may look like.

O, Stuff That is Way Late
You make me sick
Not in a throw up sorta way
But like a nagging old lady
Poached behind my ear
Informing me I just missed a sale
It was a week ago
Dammit.

O, Stuff That is Way Late
If I do you
Will you make my grades better
If I do you
Will you leave me the hell alone
I think not
And that's why you have not been done

O, Stuff That is Way Late
It's not as late as it would have been
If I had done it a week later
Right?
Certainly, this ode will make amends
It has to, or else it won't

O, Stuff That is Way Late
Will you sweeten like a good wine,
After I age you with time?
Or will you sparkle
Like a diamond smushed from Dino poo


O, Stuff That is way Late
I apologize to your beauty
For I shaved your head
When you asked for a lite trim
What could you have been
If you weren't so late?

I walked in the door. It was the last class, the final class. I emailed my project. Good, that's over. Dr. Parent is in the front, and he posted a sick video. I watch, I laugh, I cry.

I thought he was going to get Ben Peek. It was a pizza. Sweet.

Good plates. They were animal faces. We talked about them. It wasn't a red panda, it was a fox. In case you were wondering. I was one of the last to finish the course evaluation. Nice.

See you in the digital future. Future you.

O, Exams
You make me question
The value of a grade
Is it not better to party
and then get a C
Then to study
and get a C

O, Exams
How I longed for you
From Afar
But like those girls at parties
You looked better from afar
Now that your here
I would rather not be here

O, Exams
How you taunt and tease
With your six page study guides
And your fancy vocabulary
But still, I take thee anyway
If only to fail
With your F-ing rejection

O, Exams
You make me procrastinate
It's your fault
That these posts are so long
That's what she said, exams
That's what she said

Seeing as though this is our last English class, it seems fitting to write my 6th and final blog post about this class and blogging in general.

I think that blogging is a very unique way to put your ideas and opinions out in the world for other people to read and respond to. Everyone in the class did a really good job with their blogs. It was cool to see how they all progressed from the pre-fab templates provided by blogger to cool backgrounds, adding pictures and movies, and everything else.

Having said that I'm not personally a fan of blogging. It just doesn't really fit for me. I like using the internet and various technology, but at the same time I get kind of paranoid about people hacking into my accounts, etc. I forgot about blogging a lot of the time, but in my defense I did make up for it eventually. Honestly, I probably won't keep up with the blog after this class. I had a hard enough time remembering it in the first place.

I really liked this class. I love the fact that it was in a computer lab, and could use the computers as well as the internet to supplement the class. Also, the class wasn't a typical English class that focused on American Literature, Brit Lit like high school, or grammar/writing. I liked learning about different types of digital literature, being exposed to different things, and having interesting discussions in the class. I think that Dr. Parent is an awesome teacher, and if I get the chance and need another English credit, I'd definitely take a class of his.

:)

It's only 10:45am on Thursday and it's already been a fairly busy day. Today was the first day that you could sell your books back to the bookstore. So I decided that I would get up 15 minutes earlier than I normally do so I would have extra time to get to the bookstore to get rid off all of my textbooks. I stumbled out of bed at 8am to shower and hop on the bus and I got to the bookstore around 8:30ish. I was seriously the only one in the store. So I went over to the counter they had set up for buying back books and the guy started to scan the books back into the system.

Let me say that I wasn't expecting much money to begin with, having heard that the bookstore was the biggest rip off on campus. I spent somewhere between $250 and $280 on books at the beginning of the semester. Any guesses as to how much they gave me for all of them?

...

...

$30.50. And I had to keep one of them (one of my English books, but it's ok because they took the one I didn't like. Sorry N. Katherine Hayles).

I just don't understand how the hell they can sell all of these books for such high prices, and then when you turn them back in at the end of the semester, they're worth practically nothing. I bought my biology book from the bookstore used for $116, and they gave me $10 for it. Somehow that doesn't seem quite right to me. To anyone else selling back books, good luck and I hope you do better than I did.

One final down, two more to go.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Yes that's right I said Merry Christmas, not Happy Holidays, or any other politically correct phrase for wishing someone happiness during this wonderful season. It's late when I'm writing this, so I decided that being politically correct was overrated. Plus if I want to wish someone a Merry Christmas, the phrase has the same good thoughts and intentions as Happy Hannukah/Kwanza/Yom Kippur...but that's a bit of a tangent.

Anywho I was thinking about Christmas and presents and snow and such and thought of three movies that I absolutely have to see during the Christmas season:

A Year Without a Santa Claus. For the longest time, I thought the movie was called Heatmiser and Snowmiser. I remember when we had a VHS player at my house and we had the video in a white cardboard holder with the name Heatmiser and Snowmiser written on the side. It wasn't until later that I actually realized that the actual title of the movie was sung in the opening credits. Love the movie, it's old fashioned animation, kind of along the lines of Wallace and Gromet, except the people are made out of cloth instead of clay.

A Muppet Christmas Carol. Modern update of a classic Christmas story by Charles Dickens. Gonzo plays Charles Dickens/the Narrator, Michael Caine (who is an absolutely fabulous actor) plays Scrooge, and Kermit is Bob Kratchett. Anyone who is a fan of the Muppets will love this movie. It's cute and it's fun, but has it's poignant moments at the same time.

And finally....A Christmas Story. If you haven't seen this, it's blasphemy. You should stop whatever you are doing, go find a copy and watch it. A classic ---for me it's not truly Christmas until I've heard the phrases, "I TRIPLE dog dare you" and "you'll shoot your eye out kid!"

Right now I am in Art History 005- Western Art, Renaissance to Present (or something like that). Though the teacher was no necessarily my favorite, I thought that the material was very interesting. I liked learning about the different periods in art history such as the Renaissance, the Baroque, and Impressionism, and how all of these periods influenced each other. It was also very interesting to see the shift in subject matter as time passed. Of course we looked at the very well known paintings/sculptures of DaVinci, Michelangelo, Renoir, and countless others. These artists very brilliant and their works art absolutely art.

But when we started to move towards modern art, abstraction, and minimalism, things started to get weird. I don't think it's fair to consider DaVinci's Last Supper as being art in the same sense as Marcel Duchamp's Fountain. It's a urinal he turned on it's side and signed a name (not even his name) to. I understand that most of modern art is "conceptual" but something like the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or the Mona Lisa took real skill, skill that most of us can't even begin to fathom.

I decided to be boring and un-creative and do a paper for my final project. Combined with everything else going on, I figured that this would be the best option for me. I took the question "What is Literature?" and applied it to the readings that we've had in this class.

Here's a few snippets:

"In my opinion, literature is written, and should be read. The word ‘literature’ is related to words like literacy, and literate. These words suggest reading, and the ability to read. Therefore literature is something that we read. However, that does not mean that everything we read can be considered as literature. The marquee in front of a movie theater is not literature. An exit sign on the highway is not literature. We can read Pride and Prejudice or the sign in front of the local theater, but what distinguishes one as literature and the other as something else is the content."

"...These new and virtually unlimited possibilities call in to question what we view as literature. Is it possible for a work that is made solely with a computer and is meant to be viewed via computer to have the same literary value as one of Shakespeare’s sonnets?"

I didn't think that Slice or Inanimate Alice could be considered literature and went on to explain my reasoning. For an example of literature from the class I used Lasting Image and said why I considered it to be literature.

Thoughts? Opinions?

6 posts? AND 6 comments? in two-ish days?
this is going to be fun..

So I've completely blown off blogging over the past few weeks. Between Thanksgiving break and doing disgusting amounts of work for finals, blogging admittedly was not the first thing on my mind. oops.

I have three papers to write. English is done and sent in. French and Anthropology are being reviewed and I'll hopefully get the drafts back tomorrow to edit and fix to turn in for Friday. Tomorrow I have my Biology final and the second half of my Anthropology final (yes I had a final and a paper for one class). Friday I have my Art History final, which is a cumulative exam (50-75 multiple choice) spanning from the Pre-Renaissance to the present.Thankfully I'm staying relatively sane and have been keeping up with everything.

But the great part about all of this is that after Friday I'm DONE for the semester. So I get to go home a week earlier than everyone else :)

For my my final project, I decided to create a digital work similar to Slice. As a work in progress, the most difficult problem I find is polishing and developing a believable story. So I started to think, what makes me believe an author of the interweb?

Seriously, I find myself believing quite a lot these days. Its as if the internet is my encyclopedia and the authors are experts. But it isn't, and they aren't. If anything, a digital work that appears to be truth, can in reality be nothing but a lie created by someone who doesn't even exist.

It's funny to think about how people are willing to believe so much on the internet, especially if it is from a "reputable" website like news.yahoo.com or maybe sciam.com. But unlike fact checked paper, digital stories require trust.

So, that lead me to formulate the hypothesis that if a website seems clear, consise, and desketchified, we as a society are far more likely to believe its claims.

But alas, as with all things that happen in my mind, I get lost in tangents and tangle with tidbits. But what are your opinions? Is there something that you look for when you are reading something fascinating on the internet to determine if it is real or there is any fact behind it? How much do you trust the author?

So yeah, this blog is pretty last minute. I mean seriously, 11:10pm on Sunday night? I guess I really am that big of a procrastinator. So anyways, where are we going? As a class, or time together is growing to a minimum. So now, what are we going to do now? Will you keep blogging?

I find myself at a crossroads. I didn't blog for fun, it was just an assignment. But I enjoyed it. Compared with the normal, run of the mill papers and such it was a well received reprieve. I wonder what this blog was to outsiders, I wonder if anyone outside of our class ever read, and what they thought?

In the future, I want to be an author and a teacher. I want to leave behind a literary legacy, both in paper and in mind, for future generations to explore. Sometimes I wonder if I will accomplish this. I know I am not the best writer, I am not even sure if I have the potential, but that won't stop me. I will try. And in the future, whatever it may hold, will I remember this blog? Will I remember the entries I wrote? Or will it become just another cataloged page in the internet's way back machine?