Stop it

People in this class keep writing these little lamentations and ending posts.

Stop it.

Seriously,

stop. Actually, don't stop.

It's not over.

We have a nice little community here.

Good presentations, good groups, a class where I actually know people's names (and then some).

It's based on being in class, yes, however it's also about these blogs. Dialoging and flyting and the like. Good stuff.

Orality doesn't end.

Keep adding crap, I gain too much pleasure from reading your words, so for my sake, keep going. Even if your posts become rare, keep checking back and writing shit. That's all I'm going to say.


Don't be an asshole, keep blogging.

Podcast!

I missed class today because I was offered a delicious free breakfast, and I haven't eaten a delicious free breakfast in a long time. I am aware that this is disrespectful to those who went today, and I apologize for that, but seriously, delicious free breakfast. Say it again, Delicious Free Breakfast.

I like a delicious free breakfast. Although, I am aware of how not free any meal is. I mean, we must always remember, "There Aint No Such Thing As A Free Lunch". But this was breakfast, and a delicious and free one it was.

Now I shall move on to something relevant.

I want to talk about a mostly free phenomenon in the world of secondary orality, the podcast.

Now, I can hear every tech literate person sigh. We all know what a podcast does and what it is. Instead I just want to talk about how great an experience hearing a good podcast can be. A good podcast usually consists of some well spoken folk, who are passionate about whatever topic, just riffing on their subject for a bit. Sometimes they cuss and sometimes they have standards. But most of all, my favorite podcasts are very rarely scripted. It consists of three of four people in a room with a microphone. They have all the ums and uhs of real speech and their cpnversations always diverge into pointless tangents. They make inside jokes that make no sense and make fun of each other. They talk about smoking, sex, and video games while educating me in the most welcoming way possible. Unpretentious, funny, offensive. Oral.

A good way to grab podcasts is to just pay attention. Go to your favorite sites and look around. See that little link in the corner? That one that has been there ever since you wandered into this site (probably with the words, "check out our podcast!"). Click it, download it and enjoy. Also, if you use itunes or Zune software, these programs have a collected compendium of podcasts for a plethora of interests.

Here are some links for you lazy types:

http://www.podcastalley.com/
http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_directory.php
http://sic.conversationsnetwork.org/?gclid=COWZp4S9lpoCFShRagod_gRBNQ
http://www.apple.com/business/podcasting/?cid=WWA-SEGO-BIZ080324G-I620I&cp=WWA-SEGO-BIZ080306G&sr=WWA-SEGO-BIZ080306G

Also, Google reader is a fantastic way to subscribe to RSS feeds which usually include up to date links to various podcasts.

Grab one. They're freeish. TISTAAFPC.

Guest Poster: Bri (Summer Breeze)

I don't know what she is gonna write. I take no responsibility for the contents of this post if they are at all rambling or pointless.
Hello fellow bloggers it is Ghost Writer, a.k.a. Urania, a.k.a. Summer Breeze, I know you are all interested in what I have to say. Well, for one I don't care too much for Tai, I mean seriously what kind of name is Tai anyways? Secondly, I don't care too much for what Tai drinks, or how much, I feel AA should be recommended. And thirdly I just have to say there is a fine line between sarcasm and insult. I'm not going to refer to anything directly, I just wanted to put that out there. Now for something relivant. Earlier this year we were talking about flyting, or the act of fighting with someone in good manners. Flyting can only be done between two friends because otherwise it will be taken offensively (take my word for it, I tried flyting with a certain someone the other day and then he kicked me out of his house...alittle dramatic if I say so myself). Anywho, flyting started in the oral culture. I would like to think it started between two men from two neighboring tribes who were simply talking amongs themselves about life. This is how the conversation went (I'm almost positive).
Tribe man 1: Your wife looks like she has been eating too much Mammoth. Haha.
Tribe man 2: Unlike your wife she pregnant. Your wife ate all the dinasours.
(flyting is so much fun)
Tribe man 1: OH, good one Tribe Man 2, but seriously your wife is gaining weight and she's not pregnant because we all know that you prefer men.

And that last comment by Tribe Man 1 took it too far. That was an example of bad flyting.

Either way, the act of flyting, or sarcasm, or whatever it's called in any other country is the same in every culture. Silly fighting has been around before the print culture was able to (what's the word) print it.

Group Presentation... Boundaries

For our presentation the other day, I wrote this story. It was the one that Kevin read (as Neil Armstrong) on Uranus. The version we read was a bit truncated so included the original one here,

This is the story:

"One day the great god of the sky, Uranus, left the sky. He went not low but high- through the trees, through the clouds, through the great wall of air. He went higher than any man and sat with the stars. There he sat until he felt weary of the cold and he decided to leave. The great god of the sky Uranus went into his bag of magic dust; he found his bag to be empty. Without that magic dust he was trapped in the sky.

Uranus called to his servant, crow, and said, “Oh crow can you bring me my magic dust so that I may return to the Earth?” And crow obeyed. The crow did not have to search far for the magical dust for the thing that gives the sky its power is the dirt. For without the dirt, without the ground, without the horizon, there would be no sky at all. Gathering some sand from a beautiful beach, the crow began to fly above the trees. He flew above the clouds, and when he reached the wall of sky he flew even higher. Crossing into the boundary, the crow joined the stars, and, for a brief moment, beheld their beauty. With a croak, the crow, servant of Uranus, suffocated and died. From then on, Uranus has been stuck with the stars, and all who wish to pass the wall of air must wear special clothing. "

I started this story by brainstorming with Bri and Chris. We knew that we needed a transition from the corporeal world to the spiritual and that we also wanted to represent the style of storytelling found in Kane's examples. By doing so, we hoped to simulate some of the oral normatives taught to us throughout our time in the class as well as exhibit the precepts in the chapter. Starting with Crow and Uranus, we knew the importance of the anthropormorphized animal and the god. We decided to make crow a messenger of Uranus which allowed us to add travel which, in turn, also gave us our border element. Having already decided to use outer space as the venue for our transformation, we knew that the crow would have to go to space.

Upon writing these elements down, I remembered that the sea, sand, and firmament were an evocative reminder of the border between people, the sky, and the sea. I decided to exploit this and add a bit of meat to dem bones. The death of the crow being a reasonable extrapolation from an organic being leaving the atmosphere, we were able to inject some humor into the piece, another big component to an oral discourse. Having the structure of a story, I began writing it with the trends of the Oral story in mind.

Early on, I knew I wanted to use a paratactic voice. This proved to be harder to do than expected. As it turns out, connectors and transitionary words have become totally technologized into my head. My natural impulse, however, is to proof these aspects out. So that was a challenge. Other than that though, this means of storytelling came rather easily to me. Maybe there is a bit of oral tradition in me after all.

Ze Paper

Papar rough

This is the almost finished rendition of my paper. The last part's dialogue is in a word doc, I just need to get off my butt and write it into the speech bubbles. It will be done by the time I present. However, I might be late to class while getting it printed.

EDIT: Nevermind, Can't upload it because it is too fat...

Presentations uh

Click to Enlarge

Group 4 - THE FIVE STUDENTS OF RECKONING

Group four did a satirical piece. Since my eye had gotten tired from the presentation of group 3, I chose to take a more written approach for this one. I was furiously writing from John's beginning preamble and didn't have a chance to paraphrase the first speaker. If anyone has ideas for that empty speech bubble, from Ong chapter 5, please throw some ideas in the comment area.

I think I'm going to illustrate the paper presentations of each of the class members, so when you see me staring intently at your eyebrows, don't panic, I am just trying to draw you.

Anyway,

Here's the reaction illustration for group 4:


Click to Enlarge

Group 3

Click to Enlarge.

Group 3 presented on Kane chapter 4 on the topic of "Traditions". The group consisted of Keen Kenning Ben, Emo Erin, Za Zen Zach, Joan Gossimer Van Goss, and Quick Wit nick. They each wrote a story and presented it. Each story was a remediation of a myth that they found to be interesting. With a sountrack which evoked the tents and wigwams of precolonial America, the group told a story of the seasons that was well written, and like all the presentations in this class, very entertaining.

The effect they created was an atmosphere that anybody who has had a fireplace, a den, and a living relative who has seen a great deal of life can relate to. Like the New England Den or Sun Valley Cabin, we were once again children listening to the wisdom of a thousand ages. The dim lights helped too. They told of the spring, the fall, and the cycle of life, and I think I found its simplicity and execution to be quite tantalizing. Big fan.

Anyway, I sketched them as they told their stories. I found Keen Kenning Ben's rendering to be especially evocative so I drew him standing with Lightning coming out of his armpits. His grandiose tone and flights of excitement drew me in and made me excited to hear more. In fact, I think it would be great if these guys could record their stories so I could listen to them on my next drive home.

Also, I apologize for the gestural nature of the sketches. I tried to capture each person as they read so I had to move quickly.

Their blogs, with further information about the presentation, are here:

GROUP 3

http://erinoraltraditions.blogspot.com/

http://blogofbenjamin-ben.blogspot.com/

http://mnemosyneeng337.blogspot.com/

http://zsoraltraditions.blogspot.com/

Narrative Jurisprudence

Recently, I began reading a book called The Coming Race War? which has a daunting name but a simple premise. The premise is that race as a construct, law, and Critical Race Theory are convoluted subjects which need to be dealt with in a way that transcends abstract theories and embraces the post-modernity of the recent years.

This book embraces a style of writing that most rarely associate with writings pertaining to law. It is a style rooted in storytelling, allowing certain more "literary" (gasp) aspects to act as a force in teaching and arguing subjects.

This style of writing is called, Narrative Jurisprudence.

James R Elkins, a professor of Law at the West Virginia University college of law writes that,

"We might then, say of narrative jurisprudence, that it is a way of thinking about law as composed and comprised of stories, performed in their most celebrated and public way–in trials." Source

This quote shows that, even in the most crotchety of academic venues, the subjectivity and ambiguity of the flesh world can be utilized to portray complex, abstract ideas through oral mediums.

In the book, The Coming Race War by Richard Delgado a standard section of the book looks like this:

"I wish it were that way," Rodrigo said with a sigh. "But Lawyer's training and culture discourage him or her from challenging the narrative structures we just mentioned. Lawyers who spoke up or mimicked the emotional tone of the judge, would be sanctioned or disbarred (69). Lawyers cannot depart much from the stylized, desiccated stories spelled out in the rules of pleading..." (Delgado 25).

This passage seems to have more in common with the writings of Tom Clancy than a scholar of law. And stylistically, that would seem like a sound assertion. However, the meat of the matter is sound, researched, and a wholly well formed argument. Also, see that "69" in the middle of the passage? That is one of many notations which link to a large footnote bank in the back of the novel. Richard Delgado has exhaustively researched and studied his topic. This is an academic essay written in a wholly academic tone, and the content is concrete, but the medium is the message.

While I understand and admire this kind of postmodernist approach, I do understand that not all information can be presented in this way, however, I think that it would be wise for us to revisit the stylistic mediums which we use to address other fields.

I am in the process of investigating this form further and will add more to this post later.

Never thought I'd find a connection between Kane and his merry band of myth tellers and lady justice.

Book Report

Back in the day, when I read books like Lowis Lowry's The Giver (which is a book all about memory) and Anne Frank's diary (which is another book about memory, odd how amnesis has always been a part of my life), I always had these opportunities to write "Book Reports" which were basically assignments students did to prove that they could read.

In these, "Book Reports", there was always a summary and then a brief few words about "what I thought" which was almost always summed up with "I like this book". Anyway, these reports were pretty much worthless but they served one very important purpose, to teach youngsters how to speak in front of large groups and to allow them to practice this skill. Though I will not be presenting this book report in front of the class, I hope, through secondary orality, to capture the feeling of the old style book report (complete with bad grammar and stammering). Why? Because I want to relate this book to Walter Ong's book, Orality and Literacy, and share one of my favorite populist writers (I know I know, we're erudite here, but I think it's important to see what the enemy is up to on occation).

So with no further bullcrap, here is my Book Report...

Um, hi, my name is Tai and I want to talk about a book that I read. It is called, American Gods, and it's about a guy named Shadow and it was written by Neil Gaiman and I really liked this book and I think you should all read it. This book has a lightning bolt on the cover and it is about gods who live in America who are want to fight eachother. I think it has some stuff about America and it is a critique on the technologizing of America and it has a bunch of old mythologies incorporated into its content. I thought that the inclusion of the likes of Loki and Odin and Bastet in a modern book was kind of corny but after a while I started to realize why Neil Gaiman did it. He did it because he is writing about the oral tradition, also, he is weaving a roaring yarn of war and fighting and women who eat men with their vaginas (you have to read the book).

In the story, the gods of the land are sustained through the stories and traditions of their followers. Their power is enhanced by the number of times their names are uttered in prayer and the root of their existence comes from the words of their congregation. As the congregations of these norse gods all but disappear, the deities of the dying faiths would take human forms, finding niches to fit into. Here is where the relation to Ong's book begins. In chapter 6, Ong writes about the stories behind Anansi and the elemental gods of the old religions. He asserts that the power of these stories came from their repeated utterance. In doing so, the deity would become a god that one could get behind.

During the course of his travels, Shadow meets all manner of old deities who do little more than eat, sleep, and live forever. Though their existence is assured by the old manuscripts, the true potential of each god is squelched by the complete lack of an oral tradition. Instead, the Gods that truly control the land are those gods that we have created from technology. The computer, the film, and all manner of other contemporary devices have become the means of our communication and thus new gods are born. At first, the syntax doesn't seem perfect, the computer is a medium and the stories of the Norse Gods are stories, however, if one looks at the medium which the old Norse, Native American, Celtic, and Egyptian stories were related, Orally, one finds Orality as the counter part to the electronic mediums presented in the book (I am aware that the Egyptians use chirographic techniques on papyrus to relate information, this is not an analysis, this is a book report, I am allowed to be misinformed and stupid).

Towards the last quarter of the book, Shadow dies and finds himself before Anubis for judgement. However, Eostre brings him back to life by reciting his name. If this isn't Oral Tradition-ish, I don't know what is.

And I don't want to give away the ending so I'm going to stop there. Hope you liked my book report on American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

Lecture summary from 3/6/09

Click to ENLARGE PICTURE ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Welcome to the enemy.

This is what I will memorize for my presentation.

50 or more Guidelines extracted from Strunk and White:

SET 1 - Elementary rules of usage.

1. Form the possessive singular of nouns by adding an 's.
2. In a series of three or more terms with a single conjunction.
3. Enclose parenthetic expressions between commas.
4. Place a comma before a conjunction.
5. Do not join independent clauses with a comma.
6. Do not break sentences in two.
7. Use a colon after an independent clause to introduce a list of particulars, an appositive, an amplification, or an illustrative quotation.
8. Use a dash to set off an abrupt break or interruption and to announce a long appositive or summary.
9. The number of the subject determines the number of the verb.
10. Use the proper case of pronoun
11. A participial phrase at the beginning of a sentence must refer to the grammatical subject.

Set 2 - Elementary principles of Composition

12. Choose a suitable design and hold to it.
13. Make the paragraph the unit of composition.
14. Use the active voice.
15. Put statements in positive form.
16. Use definite, specific, concrete language
17. Omit needless words.
18. Avoid a succession of loose sentences.
19. Express coordinate ideas in similar form.
20. Keep related words together.
21. In summaries, keep to one tense.
22. Place the emphatic words of a sentence at the end.

Set 3 - A few Matters of Form.

23. Colloquialisms
24. Exclamations
25. Headings
26. Hyphen
27. Margins
28. Numerals
29. Parenthesis
30. Quotations
31. References
32. Syllabication
33. Titles

Set 4 - A Few Matters of Style

34. Place yourself in the background.
35. Write in a way that comes naturally.
36. Work from a suitable design.
37. Write with nouns and verbs.
38. Revise and rewrite.
39. Do not overwrite.
40. Do not overstate.
41. Avoid the use of modifiers.
42. Do not affect a breezy manner.
43. Use orthodox spelling.
44. Do not explain too much.
45. Do not construct awkward adverbs.
46. Make sure the reader knows who is speaking.
47. Avoid fancy words.
48. Do not use dialect unless your ear is good.
49. Be clear.
50. Do not inject opinion.
51. Use figures of speech sparingly.
52. Do not take shortcuts at the cost of clarity.
53. Avoid foreign languages.
54. Prefer the standard to the offbeat.


------------------------------------------------------------------

I just got done copying these fifty four things from the book and now I'm feeling a bit silly, so I will now write like a total jackass. If you care about literacy in any form, please stop reading now.

Also, the above passage has broken all manner of copywrite laws. Please, Longman Publishing, don't sue me.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Tai,

In the course of human events there comes a time to ignore your grammar teachers and forget how to read and write. And this is what I strive for. A total destruction of human literacy. In order to accomplish this we must understand our enemies. In this case, we have secured the enemy's manifesto, their bible, their creed. This has come in the form of Strunk and White's Elements of Style.

Within this heretical text, I have divided their dogma into 4 categories which all members of the "erudite commission of anti-letters and print" should place in their brain pans post haste.

These categories will serve to subdivide the work in the same way that a musician will break down the structure of a song prior to learning it (think arpeggio practice or etude memorization). Then because a structure has four walls, these will line the walls of a room. This space shall be called your memory cave. Associate each rule with a prop or compelling image and then move to the next one. Through these images you shall know not just the content of the enemy's battle plan, but the order that they intend to enact it.

-Colonel Brain-bottom

Epithets - Fixed Formulas

A quick rundown on epithets can be found here:

http://grammar.about.com/od/e/g/epitheterm.htm

and here:

http://www.answers.com/topic/epithet

A preview of an extremely interesting book can be found here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=5QIv39cbUMYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Epithets

The above read is about Epithets and contains a glossary of many common Epithets as well as a breakdown of the usages and histories of the art form.

A few from the book:

Alligator
Mr.
Ms.
Steward
Hayseed
Honest
Steppie
Stranger
Sucker
Highwayman
Harbuckle
Hard-ass

Though, just a preview, it gives a partial idea of how Epithets have been used as well as some of the ones that we seem to use on a daily basis. Never thought of "Mom" or "Dad" as epithets. Next time I'm at the dinner table I plan on asking my mother (Hey! another one!) if I can call her an epithet and see what she says...

Quick thought

CLICK FOR ENLARGEMENT (of the above image)

I had a bit of a revelation while reading Ong while preparing for the Exam. I think this about covers it.

STOP THE VIOLINS!

Many have said this but I'm going to try and put my own little spin on it.

Jazz.

The shrill whine of a trumpet. Excited crowd's glasses clinking. The scrambling sticks of a drummer and the warmth of a straight no chaser on improvised tones.

The only way to experience jazz is live. For awhile, that was the only way to learn it.

Then came the "Real Books" where someone transcribed the standard Jazz tunes of the time into notes, meter, and letters and other stuff that makes up written music.

Though this did wonders for the High School band scene I'm not sure it has extended the genre in the same way it was originally conceived. Originally people sat in front of their phonorecordplayermcjiggerthingys and transcribed with their brain and instruments.

Hearing the progression and the tones in their native environment, the player had to understand the relationship of the notes to the meter and to each other. This forced the pedagogy to form an intimate knowing of their instrument and to become more sensitive to not just the pitch or placement of notes but the more ephemeral side of things like texture. This whole exercise came from the traditions set forth by the ragtime and blues guys who laid the foundations for Jass.

Of course, this is also a big part of any "folk" music. Fiddlers learn from fiddling and yodelers yodel (I don't know why I wrote that).

Though the publication of Jazz has led to greater accessability, it's foundation is found in something that can't be written down. In fact, writing down this next thing kind of makes it not that thing.

Improvisation.

Listen to this

now, listen to this

Different.

If you go to page 275 of the "Real" brand Jazzfake book you will find a transcription of "Night in Tunesia". Solidified and codified in the great annal of the written word. However, the staff and line on that page are guidelines. One may play it exactly as written or completely fuck the thing. The heart of it is in the improvisation. The personal changes that make it distinctly the artist's.

That is what makes Jazz so damn cool. Once you have the language down (notes and stuffs) and a small vocabulary of standards in your head, very little beats the thrill of hearing a particularly clever rendition of a familiar song. The only thing better is hearing a new song played particularly cleverlike.

Just like Homer though, a Jazz guy has his little mnemonic tricks. Scales, modes, learned progressions, licks all allow the player to get to that thing they want to play just that much more easily. Sometimes they lead to some really cool jams and sometimes you create something completly out, spontaneous.

There are exceptions but they are few.

Miles Davis played completely sponaneously and created some of the best straight Jazz albums in music history (Walkin, Workin, Relaxin, Cookin, and Steamin'). He rarely ever rehearsed instead opting to allow the process, the "orality" of the thing carry his groove.

Jazz is a dialogue. You just gotta learn the language.

Missing the Point

Johnny flytes like a girl.

Flyting is the delivering of an insult.

Flyting is verbal sparring.

The content of flyting ranges from the improbably offensive to the playfully harmless. It is an incredibly fun and rewarding thing to do and, except for the most prude or sensitive sects, it is a universally understood form of dialogue between friends.

It is mostly harmless.

For instance, if I call someone:

A scum sucking bastard

I will insult them to the same degree as a cat.

This is a good thing. Especially if you want to call someone an ill name for that brief hit of cathartic negativity. You know, for when people do something benignly stupid. Like dropping a jar of cookies or sleeping with your second cousin twice removed (everyone has that cousin).

Pretty much every "cuss" word was built for flyting.
Seriously, call your friend a motherfucker or a dipshit or an asshole and you will either get a shrug or a semi-humorous "what was that for?"

This is all well and good, except, this has bled into the public existence. Call a stranger a motherfucker, and they will shrug or walk away or simply call you a motherfucker. Then you have to keep heaping it on until they hit you.

Because this is the point of going out into public: to yell obscenities at people until they hit you. Actually, this is a bit of a misstep. The goal is to have a decent excuse to hit them. If they hit you then you can hit them and then you win. At life. You hit them alot and then win at life. This is how it goes.

Anyway.

The point is that you have to keep saying things. I mean seriously, you waste all that effort to call a complete stranger a knobgobbler or a fucknut or a shitcock that when it comes to fisticuffs you're too damn tired to beat them down.

So tiring.

Too direct.

So, in the tradition of Strunk and White, I have drafted a working prototype of vernacular that can be used easily and efficiently in the company of alien personas in order to fight them.

The only thing that you have to do is ditch that crude sense of masculinity or whatnot in order to think like an overly passive-aggressive old lady. You have to target specific things. Things that would not otherwise be insulted. Insecurities.

For instance.

Say I run into Goldie Haun and wish to court her with my boot. Traditionally, I would call her a "bitch" or a "twat" or some other inelegant term until she uppercutted me. This, as was stated earlier, takes a certain kind of effort that I don't care to expend. Emotional effort. Anger. Instead I target specific things in her history and then exploit them to my intellectual advantage. Bluntly.

So I think about what I know about her. I recall her career. And I begin.

"Goldie"
"Yes?"
"You're career has not gone well."
"what?"
"You don't look as nice as you once did."
"Pardon?"
"Kurt Russel didn't think much of your acting."
"That's very rude! I don't even know you!"
"Sometimes, if I run into a picture of you, I don't recognize you because you were famous before my time and this has made me less appreciative of your body of work. However, this is kind of weird because I think very highly of Lauren Bacall. She became radiant and mature in age, you became a scruffy, tired schnouser. "
"Sir, if you keep this up I will hit you."
"You have a baboon face."

Then she will hit me. Minus the emotional or verbal expendature involved in yelling at people.

Learn about people, observe them as you always do. Just pay extra attention to the little things And then use these little things to drive a furious wedge between their self esteem and ego until any conception of place or context for their existence is lost and they are forced to resort to violent, animalistic forms of interaction.

Then you beat them. With your hands. Because this is what humans should do. Yell at eachother and fight.

Here are some good openers:

"You parents probably didn't like you."

"You have clumsy looking calves"

"Your brother died and now your life is better."

"Sometimes your friends forget to call you."

"People generally don't like you."

"You have a very bland face."

"Your parents wish you were a girl."

"You obviously work out but you have have terrible acne."

"Children dislike you."

"Are you a girl?"

"I had trouble telling you were a girl."

"You wear nice clothes to hide the fact that you can't find a suitable identity and so you turn to the default identity that will make it easy to get a job yet make no statement about who you are."

"That's an ugly shirt."

"You have timid looking hands."

"Sometimes your friends state inadiquacies about your personality, and though they act like they don't really care, they are aware of them and this will probably cause your relationships to eventually implode into a horrific blend of internal strife and sorrow."

"You're not overweight yet but I can tell that in five years you will probably have some heft about you."

"I don't like your shoes."

Any complaints should be forwarded to this address...

Academic survivalist

I'm not sure what I'd do without my notebooks and paper. I suppose I'd become an archaeologist, or make pizzas.

Professor S, in a recent class, asked us to think back to a time without our technologies of writing. The time of memory and speech-- when scops ruled the scene and orators got the ladies. In order to even begin to grok those times, I needed to at least be able to remember what it was like to not write or read.

So I started my mimetic time machine.

So I laid back in my bed to remember.

And a smoking gorilla punched the side of my car while I took the first exit out of Fargo.

I had fallen asleep.

Washing my face and eating a cold slice of pizza I tried again.

I slashed through the vines that had long since enshrouded my first house. My parents were there, still together. I remembered a blue Frisbee with the image of an eagle imprinted on it. I remembered a baseball net and the cherry tree that my mom harvested once a summer to make cobbler. I remembered our unfinished basement and my bucket of legos.

Eventually, I wandered into my old room and shut the door. I picked up an old stuffed dinosaur and started shuffling through old scribblings. On my racecar desk was a large vase of mourner's flowers. Those weren't supposed to be there. I heard my mom yell at my dad and the crash of a broken plate emanated through my skull. Their dueling screams slingshot me back into the present and I found myself on my coporeal bed feeling dizzy.

OK

So I took a shower, went to Spectators for a beer, and returned to my room.

Turns out there are certain things in my head that I should avoid. Landmines. Good to know.

I turned off my lights and resolved to try again. This time, I gave myself an anchor. Placing the first CD I ever purchased into my computer, the speakers started humming the lyrics from Cream's "Disraeli Gears."

I drifted back into my past, trying to find that moment when I thought without glyphs. The stream of Clapton's crooning led me to my first guitar, my 50 watt crate amp, and my first violin lesson. Susan bobbed to the metronome as I scratched out the spine scraping screams of a nine year-old behind a fiddle. Susan bent forward toward the stand and wrote something:

"Practice this section"

not far enough.

I pushed back further.

My mom had taken me to my lessons in a green Subaru... no ... wait, that was my Dad. Shit, things were muddled. (Still are)

A slight clap from the speakers and my addled mind sent me somewhere else.

Ginger Backer's drums echoed in my head. I found myself in a foggy room with trembling mermaids and tales of brave Ulysses. In front of me flashed the face of Homer Simpson eating donuts. I looked to my right and saw various instruments of personal destruction strewn on the ground next to the futon. To my left my old roommate sat with a grin on his face and piece of General Tso's chicken stuck to his shirt. He looked at me.

"Dude, hey, can you pass the grinder? Hey, pass the grinder, I need to pack this before the next episode starts."

I passed him the spice grinder as music echoed through the smoke filled auditorium of my collegiate freshman year. Glancing down, I looked at the business 101 book, "Brand New", sitting by my feet. The lettering was clear to me, reading was tough, but I knew what I was doing.

As "we're going wrong" came on, my present self drifted into slumber.

(To be continued)

My Thoughts are Ungrammatical

Hey if you dig Marshall McLuhan I recommend The Medium is the Massage , especially if you like things that are well designed and exceptionally hard to read.

Anyway,

This passage supports a very important thing: wars come and go, but my Englishs are Forever.

"The smell on the north sides of trees is different." (Kane 37)

This is from Wisdom of the Mythtellers by Sean Kane. It is a sentence that is both easily made fun of (The smell on the north side of my Uncle Eugene is different) and is reflective one of my favorite parts of the Oral Tradition. It's practical.

Think about it...
Say it...

Practical

My god, I think I just popped a Liberal Arts boner.

They have numbers (the language of God). They made satellites and got to churn the great butter whack of society that makes my bread so delicious and digital. They walk amongst gods. When Oppenheimer passes, girlies throw shirts and men shutter. I have Snoop Dogg; they have the atom bomb.

Well now things are looking up.

Because, now I know that trees smell different on their north sides.

It will be a disease of language that only death or Tony Soprano's two-by-four upside my head can cure.

The specific part that this quote originated from is a section that portrays spoken word as not only a step in linguistic history but as a medium for minute morsels of invaluable information. Within even the most ludicrous sounding epigram is a generation's worth of information. From how to properly wander the forest to the best way to smoke a pipe, the oral cultures created a wonderfully practical collection of sayings.

The examples Kane gives generally come from the indigenous North American people.

For all the white folks out there, here's a little something for ya.

Ben Franklin was a fan of these. His Poor Richards Almanac housed many sayings that ranged from the extremely practical to the painfully worthless. The useful ones still plague society today and the less useful ones allow us to laugh at that savage time from our great internet powered ivory tower. That balding curmudgeon learned us good that a penny saved was a penny earned and that an apple a day kept the doctor away. They were cute and easily memorized but the wisdom in each one could keep a person alive.

This bit from Wisdom of the Mythtellers intrigues me because it is an example of a mnemonic that seems more elegant than repeating something ad nauseum and more accessible than a memory theater for the borderline idiot like myself.

At some point I hope to condense the whole of human knowledge and experience into a group of fart jokes.

"the north side of my Uncle Eugene smells different as the southern wind blows"

(I think I stole that joke from somewhere)

baconword

(
(Anything in parenthesis should be skipped)

Turbaconwordducken is a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken. The entire thing is then wrapped in a layer of bacon and then braised with Crisco. After wrapping, the cook scrawls, with a permanent marker, various verses from "The Big Book of Absurdities" on the birdball rendering the thing entirely inedible.

What follows is a brief summary to the first chapter of Walter J. Ong's "Orality and Literacy".

(Walter Ong compensates for his small feet by writing books)

For the sake of argument, Ong first divides the linguistic world into two camps, the "Literate" and the "Oral". He then uses the writing of one cool cat to five some real meat to his argument.

Ferdinand de Saussure, fahther ov mahdurn liingguistiks, buhleevd wrihting 2-b: "a complement to Oral speech, not a transformer."

(wahz gunna right liek ths ahl teh way thru, but I got lazy.)

Henry Sweet augmented the views of Saussure by insisting that we create words through the assemblage of "functional sound units or phonemes."

(I told my nemesis that he was my phonehmee and he died.)

They believed that the sound and feeling of the oral word was the arbiter of the written, not the other way around. Their beliefs came in reaction to the long time teaching that oral traditions were only important measured by their written cousins. Walter Ong supports this philosophy with his notion of, "Primary Orality".

An Primary Orality is defined as Orality pertaining to a people who can't read nor write. Through these cultures, Ong has examples of societies that live in his prestructural ideal.

Ong points out on page 8 that, "Writing can never dispose with Orality."

(One time, Writing disposed of Orality and a refridgerator fell on its head.)

he justifies his point by illustrating that, "Writing is a secondary modeling system" which depends a primary system known as "Oral Speech".

"Oral Speech" is when people make sounds with their mouth and lungs that are somewhat coherent.

Throughout the chapter, Ong defends the notion that Language is based more so on Orality than the written word. He cites the Greek writing, "Rhetoric", which was a big discourse on the subject of talking about things. It created a "scientific art" (mind you, this is using a very loose definition of the word science) or a theory for the spoken word.

(science science lol)

It showed "how a body of explanation" could have been created that showed , "how and why oratory achieved and could be made to achieve its various specific effects (pg. 9)."

This is used as an element to give historical context and justification for the initial thesis of the piece.

Towards the end of his essay Ong presents a few disclaimers for his vocabulary. The first is that the term "primary" in "Primary Orality" exists only in contrast to "secondary orality" which is what we do on cell phones and the like--a kind of oral mechanism, somewhat abstracted. He also, on page 12, admits that literacy is powerful and that the theory as a whole is a bit of a give/take proposition.

(I can't remember if this next part is from the reading or from the lecture that the professor who evoked this blag gave. Eitherway it's a cool concept.)

This first chapter is about "reconstruction". The reconstruction of the part of the mind-brain-thing that controls our language usage in order to create a better understanding of the relationship between things coming out of your mouth and written wordstuffs.


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The parties Tai Kersten take no responsibility for the views expressed within this digital log.