Walter Ong

"Writing introduces division and alienation, but a higher unity as well. It intensifies the sense of self and foster more conscious interaction between persons. Writing is consciousness-raising."

This quote by Walter Ong is very interesting to me. I agree with this quote completely because he is not merely saying language, but more specifically writing in this quote. It think that writing naturally has much more of an effect on people than spoken language. This is especially relevant in our society because we value what is written down so much more than what is spoken. Take our government for example, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are the two most important pieces of legislation in our country's history, and they are written down. They are written down so that they are permanent, it is visible and understandable, not just the latter. By having things written down we are putting them unders much subject to scrutiny. This is because it is often made available for everyone to see. It is much harder to deny written work because it is an actual object. Spoken language is much easier to deny if need be.

As for where Ong writes about language having unity, I think that he is completely right. Written work has the power to unite massive amounts of people around a single idea. Written works have often throughout history created bonds between millions of people. Take the bible for example, it is one book that millions of people around the world can unite around. This is how bonds are formed. Also, I think that written work does not divide people as much as people unite around different works which from there causes disagreements and division. It is not the work that can cause division, but the opinions of the people that are the cause.

Handlers? 12th post for Idiot Savant

It is almost as though they were his handlers for the performance.

This was one of the lines that I wrote in my 6th post for this assignment. I already explained what they did during the play and now I just have one more thing to add on pertaining to what they did. As we were leaving the show one of the men with the funny hats walked off stage and almost directed us out of the theater. Now throughout all of this he remained in character and completely still. The point of this was to convey to us how the show was not just a performance but that it was real life. It is almost as though we were at a zoo and we had just seen a performance by the animals and all of the handlers were directing people out. The Idiot Savant was the animal and we were the observers. I only realized this because I found it odd how the man directing us out stayed in character the whole time. Also, by having him come off the stage and remain in character it shows how it was not acting. Everything that we saw was supposed to be real life. This was a way of "landing the plane" for everyone in the audience.

The end of the play, 11th post for Idiot Savant

The end of this performance was a happy time for me, mainly because it meant that this show was finally over. Even though it was only about an hour and a half long, it felt like hours for me. The end of this play though was pretty obvious for me since it finished off most the my thoughts about the play itself. At the end we see only the Idiot Savant left on stage by himself looking around frantically for the duck, aka his sanity. He is left alone on stage at the end to represent how everyone else was a figment of his imagination (except for the people with the hats as I have mentioned in one of my previous posts). The last motion that the Idiot Savant has in this performance is him falling to the ground and landing precisely on the number five. The significance here is to show how that the performance is over and how he is complete. The whole point of this performance was to show us how he was in search of something. From the beginning of the play he was arguing with both himself and his alter egos trying to get information out of himself. At the end he is complete because he has achieved his goal; he has found whatever is was that he was looking for. As I mentioned before the point of the number was to show how close the people were to getting information out of him and by having him fall on the number five was to show how only he was able to get the information. When I write information, I mean understand what it was that was concerning him. By all of this I mean that he achieved his goal.

Watch out! 10th post for Idiot Savant

WATCH OUT!

That was the loud and obnoxious sound that was played over and over throughout the play. When it was first played I actually did "watch out". I thought that something drastic was about to happen on stage. A few days after the play I realized that it had been played, not to anticipate something drastic that was about to happen, but to represent a reoccurring theme. This was all made clear to me one morning when I was waiting to pick up my friend to drive him to school. I had been listening to the radio waiting for him to get in the car when all of a sudden I heard a very familiar tune. I am not sure what exactly the song was called, but it is the one that is constantly played in all of those Sam Adam's commercials. When the song came on I just thought that I was going to hear the advertisement for Sam Adam's beer, but when I realized that what was playing was a real song, I noticed what the producers of that commercial had been trying to do. They played the same song over and over in every commercial to get people to remember what was being advertised. This was so every time that song was played, whether it was for the commercial or not, people would think of their product. They wanted to make their product stick. This is what the producers of Idiot Savant did, they used the same copy of the woman's voice screaming "watch out!" over and over to make a reoccurring theme stick with the audience. This was so every time that the sound was played, we would be able to recognize exactly what was happening on stage. Stickiness happens everywhere, you just have to WATCH OUT!

The boats 9th post for Idiot Savant

Does anybody that very short little scene where the first woman (his good side) and the Idiot Savant appear on stage in boats? They just walked onto stage in little foot powered fake boats? Well that doesn't make any sense at all, unless it has deeper meaning to it...... DUH, obviously this will have deeper meaning behind it.

This particular scene was pretty easy for me to understand. The whole point of the first woman coming out onto stage in a fake boat was to represent how language must be fluid. You cannot just randomly throw around sentences and words without having some sort of connection between them. Since this whole play was about getting to the Idiot Savant, using language that flowed seems to be a fairly simple concept.

I also found it interesting how they only showed the first woman using a boat and not the second woman. This was an effort to show how she was his good side and how she made the effort to connect with him. It is to make an example of her good will and all of her attempts to get through to him. She tried using language that flowed so that he would be able to understand it. Sadly this effort failed. Once she made this attempt, the Idiot Savant came onto the stage in a similar boat, only this one had some sort of a megaphone in the front of it. The Idiot Savant did this to show how he was not going to focus, he merely was mocking the first woman. Again this is another example of how an autistic child might act. They often will copy what others are doing, just as we saw Wilem Defoe's character do in this scene.

As for the megaphone, I feel that it was to make this point stand out. It was to drive home the idea to us that he was not going to listen easily. This also added to the fact that he was copying and mocking her. It merely made the scene louder and more noticeable to everyone else.

Same voice? 8th post for Idiot Savant

Did anyone notice that during the play, the giant duck and the voice over were the exact same voice? This shows how the duck also represented his sanity and thought. At first he was merely arguing with himself, yelling to nowhere and no one, but at the end the duck comes on stage and the Idiot Savant seems to be a little more clear in everything that he does. It is almost as though the duck is his back up; just as when the play is nearing the end and the Idiot Savant is still being toyed with by the girls, the duck comes on stage to provide him with some help. it always did seem that Wilem Defoe's character was more understandable when the duck was on stage. His actions were swifter and his words were more clear. By having the duck on stage is showed to us all that the Idiot Savant was ready to not be tortured by those women any more. This is all becuse the Idiot Savant throughout the entire play was uncomforable and very irritable. He was never allowed to be left alone because he was always under questioning by the women on stage.

Even though the duck was around in the beginning (we know this because they were exactly the same voice), he was not on stage and therefore not much help to the Idiot Savant. This is why the Idiot Savant got so angry. It is because this giant duck was merely talking to him and not giving him much help. By making his presence at the end the duck was able to provide support for Wilem Defoe's character. Even though the duck did not do anything, that was not his purpose, he was only there to represent the coherence of the Idiot Savant and he did indeed do his job. It almost seemed anticlimactic in the sense that just as the play is about to finish, the duck makes big appearance to help out the Idiot Savant, meanwhile throughout the entire performance, much assistance was also needed.

The yellow jacket 7th post for Idiot Savant

Throughout this play I had to think deeply about almost everything and not just take it for what it appeared to be on stage, but out of all of the actions and language used in this performance there was on object which stood out the most to me. This object was the yellow jacket worn by Wilem Defoe's character for only a short scene. This jacket stood out to me because it was random, just as the little boats that were driven on stage which will be in my next post. This jacket represented more than what it obviously was, it represented Wilem Defoe's quest for composure. He was running around the stage for the entire play never with a moment to just be calm. Just as an autistic child or any young child for that matter has a certain object which they tend to cling to which they find to be comforting, the Idiot Savant has his yellow jacket. As I recall it was only put on after he began to yell at his own thought, "the voice". Once he began to scream one of those men with the funny hats brought a yellow jacket out onto stage. For a moment he began to keep calm when it was on, but after a while he became uncomfortable. Once he became uncomfortable he took it off in a frantic way and moved onto the next piece of the performance. He did this just as an autistic child can often not keep their focus and move on from one subject to another. It is hard for them to sit still and they begin to throw tantrums when they do not get their way. These were all the actions of Wilem Defoe's character while in possession of the jacket. He merely had it on for a short amount of time and then moved on to another subject because he has trouble focusing. At first the jacket was comforting to him and then it became more of a bother to him then anything else.

Along with the representation of his lack of ability to focus, this jacket also had one more meaning behind it. Going with the idea that he did not have jacket on for long brought me to think of how he could not be bounded. He was unable to sit still and to collect his thoughts and he barely gave himself time to focus on what was going on. All of this showing to us how he could not be tamed merely by giving him an object to find comfort in.

P.S. If this helps at all, think of Linus from Charlie Brown and his security blank. He always used it when he got nervous or uncomfortable. The Idiot Savant here uses his jacket when he is angry but since he is autistic he loses his focus so easily and moves on from it. The concepts of a security object are the same here though.

The voice over 6th post for Idiot Savant

All throughout the play we kept hearing this loud, deep and authoritative voice coming over the sound system. This voice was supposed to represent his thought. It spoke to everyone on stage at the same time because he was only arguing with himself. Remember that the other two women on stage were merely representing his conscious in a way. They were toying with him throughout the entire play, each acting in their own specific way (good and evil). The voice had continued to tell the characters that they had been fooled, which after a while began to bother the Idiot Savant. At one point he lashed out and yelled at the voice over (his thought) because he could not focus. This is not actually him arguing with someone as much as it is him arguing with himself and getting mad at himself because he is losing focus. All of this constant change is making him uneasy and his mind cannot focus on what is exactly going on.

As a side note, the other people, the ones with the little hats on, are real. As the Idiot Savant is arguing with himself, the other people bring him the objects that are placed on stage. They are only able to do this because he is arguing out loud with himself. He is yelling his thoughts aloud for the others to hear and the objects are brought on to him on stage. It is almost as though they were his handlers for the performance. They walked him onto stage in the beginning, brought him all of the objects that he needed during the show and at the end directed us out of the theater. The two women and the duck are not real at all, they are the figments of his imagination.

The table 5th post for Idiot Savant

The table. As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I feel that the table represents something about the second woman on stage. However, I also feel that the table has its own meaning as well. The table in this play is used to represent the strength of language. It is there to show that words must have meaning, they cannot simply be thrown about and scattered amongst a conversation. It is necessary that you know the meaning of the word and that you use it in the right context. Words cannot just be used without having meaning behind it, this is what the Idiot Savant is trying to show us when he does take the table out of the wall. I remember him taking the table and hoisting it over his head. All of this is to make an example of the table, to bring it to our attention, not just in the sense that it means something, but to convey that it represents so much more. Also the fact that it was a strong wooden table made the point come across so much clearer to me. All in all it is showing that language needs a base and must be founded on something strong. Make your words stick by using the right ones, not just anyones. As for the woman, having her come out from behind the table represents how much stronger she really is. To describe the situation, the Wilem Defoe's character took the table out of the wall, and inside of that same wall was that woman crouched inside. By having her come out from there and entering on stage in an odd sort of way shows to us that she is going to be much different than the first woman to appear on stage. It shows us that first of all she is much stronger, and second of all, she is going to be a different from the other people on stage (which in this play is not hard by any means). Having her come out after the table is taken out shows that she is going to follow in the same footsteps of the table. She is going to be strong. The second woman always did seem so much stronger in her tone of voice and her questioning. She was not compassionate at all, she did not get along with the first woman, and she always seemed to be somewhat scary. The whole point of this representation was to show how she was strong. It represents how she was different, she was his other alter ego. She was the bad half of his conscious in a way. the first woman entered stage conventionally and was more sympathetic to the Idiot Savant. The second woman on the other hand was his bad half, showing this through her dark and almost hidden entrance from behind the table. Showing how she is not necessarily wanted but she is making her appearance whether the Idiot Savant knows it or not. The Idiot Savant did seem somewhat angry at the first woman when he took the table out of the wall. All of this representing that he was so fed up with her and he was angry. Because of this he brought out he evil side, when he took the table out. This is how the woman were his "angel and devil". He evoked them, he brought them out of himself because when he was calm in the beginning, he was level headed and trying to think nice and clearly. When the second woman came on stage, he brought her out because he was angry and began to lose focus. This is why he took the table out also. The Idiot Savant was so fed up with meaningless talk that he needed to show the first woman to be strong and have meaning in her words. This is why she was getting now where, because her words were not strong at all.

Let's start from the beginning 4th post for Idiot Savant

Where do I begin? Let's just start out by saying that this play was weird and eccentric. Ever since the opening scene when we saw Wilem Defoe's character walking across stage, I was just in shock of how odd the play had opened up and everything from that point on still continued to amaze me. The play opened with the Idiot Savant walking with a fake bird in a cage and what seemed to be a stick in his mouth. The play continued on and we saw the first lady appear on stage and begin to ask the Idiot Savant questions. I do not remember what these questions were, but I do remember what her motions were when she asked them. She also kept attempting to move from number to number around the room. I was completely in shock for the first few minutes until it all started to finally click for me. What helped me greatly was the fact that Wilem Defoe's microphone broke on stage. This gave me a minute to collect my thoughts and to see if they actually made sense.

My ideas about this play all keep the idea in mind that this entire play is about language. That is the main point that they all connect back to. Also, since we had done previous assignments in class about being specific when using language, those exercises, I felt, helped me out greatly. It allowed me to understand what is important in what is being said and to be able to filter out all the language that was unnecessary. So here it is, my take on the play Idiot Savant.

First of as a side note which I will get to later on, the two women on stage were his alter egos. The first lady was nice and the second lady was more stern and mean. Almost as though they were playing the role of the angel and devil on his shoulders, telling him what to do and constantly toying with him, leaving him unable to make a decision. As the play opened up, I believe the first lady was either on stage when the play began or she entered onto the stage not too long after the play had begun. Either way, from the very beginning she seemed to be trying to draw stuff out of him, asking questions and trying to get information from him. She was the clear thinking level headed side of his conscious, while the other lady was more demanding and was always in a bad mood. The point here is that when the first lady was on stage she seemed to be asking a lot of questions and through these questions she was hoping that he would open up to her and allow her to get some answers. The stick that was in his mouth in the opening of the play, which prevented him from talking, represented the answer that she was indeed looking for. This is because we witnessed her quite a few times, trying to make a grab at it and to get it away from him. The fact that it was tied to a string around his neck conveyed to us that it was important to him (his thoughts) and that he was not going to let it get away from him easily. This is why the lady had to work so hard and ask so many questions in order to try and get it away from him. The number on the walls to the both sides of the stage represented her progress in getting the answers and knowledge out of him. The higher the numbers were that she was at, the closer it she was to getting the knowledge that she desired. I realized all of this when she began to move around in sequential order. she began at number one and only reached number two. This was to show how her being soft with him was going to get her nowhere. She was asking the wrong questions, just like in the clip from the Pink Panther, when the inspector asked if the man's dog bit. The man replied no and when the dog bit the inspector the man simply told him that it was not his dog. I will post the link to the video clip at the end of this blog post so it will be more clear. From all of this I am hinting at the fact that the numbers represented how close she was getting to him. The first lady never did get very far and seemed to always gravitate more to the right side of the stage and towards the lower numbers. The second lady on the other hand, appeared from behind the table and next to the number four. This, as Jordan pointed out after the show, represented that she was going to get no farther than number four. While I agree with this, I also think that it was meant to show how much stronger she was than the first lady who appeared on stage. Both because of the table, which I will explain in my next blog post, and because she was more demanding of the Idiot Savant. Because of her being so much stronger, she was able to get closer to him and farther in her questioning. This was all in the same hopes that Wilem Defoe's character would open up to her and reveal the answer. When I write about the Idiot Savant opening up to the women, I do not mean discussing it with them, I mean that he will be able to come to reason over a decision because these women are not real, they are merely his alter egos being portrayed on the stage. Also, he will not be revealing thins to them, by this I mean that he will discover the answer that he is searching for. The Idiot Savant is merely arguing with himself and searching within himself to find what he is indeed looking for.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXn2QVipK2o

Forgetfulness 3rd post for Idiot Savant

"It has floated down a dark mythological river, whose name begins with an L as far as you can remember."

These are two lines from Billy Collins' poem entitled "Forgetfulness".

After reading this poem it first seemed to me that this poem was about just thought and random little things that we learn throughout our lives, but after thinking about it for a few minutes I realized how much more there actually is to this. The entire poem is not simply talking about facts, but about our thoughts and language in general. The poem is talking about the constant fluidity and changing of thought and our language. Langauge is constantly in motion it is ever changing and evolving, new authors appear everyday and they all contain new works waiting to be read by others, but what happens to our previous thoughts, everything that we thought we once knew? Just as in one of his lines Collins writes that "even now as you memorize the order of the planets, something else is slipping away", he is referring to the quite recent change of pluto no longer being considered a planet. The idea of pluto being the last planet in our solar system has been around for quite sometime, ever since I was a little child and way before that Pluto was always considered to be a planet. Now there has been a sudden change, not that pluto is no longer there, but the fact that we do not consider it a planet anymore. This is what Billy Collins is referring to, the idea of all of our previous knowledge being obsolete to what is happening at this very moment. All of our thoughts are in constant jeopardy and what do we do when they are no longer serve their purpose? We throw them away and they float right on down that "mythological river, whose name begins with an L as far as you can remember." This is what those two lines from his poem are referring to, not that we have actually lost our thoughts, but we have disregarded them as being useful and worthwhile so we no longer need to remember them. They are still there, they are merely in "a little fishing village where there are no phones", out there somewhere, unable to contact us, therefore being out of commission in our minds. This shows the constant changing our language as a whole and more specifically our very society. It shows how we are forever changing and are always in motion, trying to keep up with ourselves and to be ready for the next thought to come along and destroy everything which once stood in it's way.

This is all able to connect back to the play "Idiot Savant". In this play we heard many times throughout the show a narrator's voice over the sound system that would tell us to "rejoice" when something was supposedly made obvious to us and also that we had been fooled by the characters. This shows the constant changing of ideas throughout the play. The voice is telling us what is made clear and how we have been tricked all of the time. I personally did not see what exactly this voice was making clear to us, but I did have some ideas about it and every time it would tell us that we had been tricked, I would lose those ideas and think that they were useless. It shows to us how ideas are never solid. There is always room to grow with ideas and even pieces of art. Think of the text that we read about Lehtem in the beginning of the semester and how his whole argument was based around the idea that ideas are continually thought upon and redeveloped into an often completely new form. Because of all of this we are forced to lose our old ideas in order to stay current and to not lose track of what is indeed happening in society. All of these changing ideas only contribute to and exemplify the fast paced and every changing world which we now live in.

Also, one last note, the link that we used in class and also the one that I referred to tonight to consult the Billy Collins poem again was a hypertext. It had links on it to connect you to other websites containing information which had to do with what was mentioned in the poem. Now think about that and isn't that a new thought than the one that you had before. Are you going to go back and look at Collin's poem differently now because of what I have just mentioned? There's your example for a new thought. Thanks Billy Collins.

"if I must, I must" 2nd post for Idiot Savant

In this one simple line from the movie “Mary Poppins”, Mary Poopins herself conveys both her frustration and self-realization of what she must do. Though she does convey frustration, there is not anger hidden inside of her. It is merely that the children that she is watching over and the other adults in the room are not listening to her at all. Since they are not paying attention to her she knows that she must join them, as they float above the room about to have tea. While she is not thrilled over the idea of giving in and going up into the air with everyone else, she realizes that is it what she “must “ do.

The point here of conveying two emotions through only three different words is to show the complexity of language in itself. While it may seem like just a simple example of Mary Poppins making a choice of what to do, it is really so much more than that. In this line Mary Poppins shows us how she has eliminated all other options of trying to the get everyone else to listen, and now knows what she must do. It is not what she particularly wanted to do, but she has no other option and going up there with everyone else “must” be done.

This all is able to connect back to the play which our class saw about two weeks ago in the village. “Idiot Savant” can be compared to the complexity that the one line from “Mary Poppins” shows to the audience. The entire play was based around the idea of language. It was to show us how important it was, how it should be used and the meanings that can be hidden behind it all. However, while both of these pieces of art convey complexity in language, “Idiot Savant is on a much greater level than that one line from “Mary Poppins can even try and compare too. Everything in and about “Idiot Savant” was complex, there was nothing straight forward in the play at all. In “Mary Poppins” her intentions, in the line that we are examining, were very clear yet there was still more behind it. In “Idiot Savant”, however, the intentions of everyone in that performance were unclear and the language that was used held an even deeper meaning. I feel that the movement in the play acted almost as a helping verb to the language being used. I do not mean that the movements helped me to understand the dialogue any better, as much as the movements added to the complexity of the language. Yet as much as I feel they made the play more confusing, I also think that they brought more things into the light for me. Think of it this way, if they had shown two people sitting down at a table and reading the script, how much more confused would we be? I think that the movements were there to both tone down and add more complexity to the performance. All of the movements can somewhat help us to understand what is going on, but at the same time most of these motions were so abstract that they could have added even more confusion to the audience. I think that the motions implied deep meaning along with the language being used itself. Honestly throughout most of the play, I forgot what the dialogue was during the different scenes, yet I remember the motions of the actors very vividly. They stood out to me more than the language because they were just so odd. It’s a visual experience which is hard to forget.

“Hubris at Zunzal”

This poem for the most part confused me greatly, as have most poems that I have read in my life. I do not know why but poetry has never really been the strongest part of any of my English/composition classes. Poems always seemed to annoy me a lot, like a child who thinks that he is better than everyone just because he is rich and fancy. That is exactly what poems are to me, rich and fancy kids who think that they are better than everyone else. Honestly that is why I enjoyed Billy Collin’s poem in which he mocked all love poems in one single shot. I loved it because it just called out everything which I have hated the most of poetry, symbolism. Symbolism to me was always the most annoying part to have to get passed and understand, but Billy Collins ripped love poems apart and for that I congratulate him. This poem entitled “Hubris at Zunzal” was not overall that bad for me once we started to analyze it in class together, yet I still do not like it. Even though there is not that much symbolism in this poem, to me it is still a snobbish rich kid. Why do they always think that they are better than everyone just because they are fancy? Poems and simple language can all have the same meaning in the end, so why don’t they just save everyone the trouble and stop being so complex. Take these two lines for example “And dumped it white into the waves, when it came upon me again me how sweet it had been”. Now in class I believe that we began to say how what the main character in the poem dumped into the ocean (his coconut milk and 150 proof rum) represented bought language and his thoughts and how he lost them by mixing them into the ocean. As a result of this he lost them (his thoughts) because as we all know that if you dump a drink into the ocean, well…good luck at getting it back because its mixed in their. Then he goes on to say about how it is so sweet when the drink washed back up onto him. How hard is it to say that you forgot a thought and it came back to you. I could have saved myself about 10 lines of writing and so much time trying to figure this out if the author had been straight forward with his thoughts in the first place.

Even though I do not appreciate the poem at all I can still understand how this is able to connect to the play “Idiot Savant”. The whole point of the play was to convey the idea of how important language is. The idea of this poem was the same thing I feel. It is to show how language is a gift and should not be wasted. The person in this poem wasted his thoughts and then luckily, they splashed back over him, but most of the time when you dump a drink into the ocean it is lost. There is no way to get it back, that is why you must hold on to it and keep all of your ideas together. I have about a page full of notes in my notebook and another ten or so ideas for blog posts about the play “Idiot Savant” saved onto my iPhone. This is because when I get a good idea or even a simple one I want to remember it, I do not want to have to rack my brain later on to try and remember what it was. The whole point that I am trying to make here is that you should not waste good thoughts. Keep them sacred because you never know what they might turn in to. Just as in one of the scenes from “Idiot Savant” we see Wilem Defoe’s character faced with the availability of taking a gift from one of the women on stage. He attempts to take the present but is unable to and after a while he loses his chance to get the box. After this we find out that the present inside of the box was a fancy watch. All of this is meant to convey to us that TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE. I find it quite ironic that after all of the time that he had wasted trying to get the box from the woman and deciding if he really wanted it, that the gift inside was a watch. He wasted all of the language used in that two minute scene trying to get a gift which just conveys to him that he is wasting time. Since time is of the essence, it is a gift, just like language and he should never waste it. He is frustrated and angry at the end of this dilemma because he has missed the opportunity. (This is a part of the play which is an example of what I wrote about before, when I mentioned how the movements in this play brought things into the light from me. The actions in this scene, the attempting to obtain the gift and the constant failure of that very action, all made my ideas more clear to me. If there was no action and only dialogue for this scene, would you honestly be able to understand it? I would not.) In essence Wilem Defoe’s character has just dumped his drink into the ocean. He has wasted his thoughts through wasting time and now is unable to get them back. The fact that the gift inside of the box was a watch show that time is a precious gift and do not let it get away from you that easily. Granted the poem did not seem to concern how long he took to finally dump his drink into the ocean but the fact is still that he did. The connection between the two here is that they both wasted their precious thoughts and were unable to keep control of language, one through carelessness and the other through wasting time.

1st post for Idiot Savant

This will be the first of my ten reflections on the play Idiot Savant.

It has been about 2 weeks now since I have seen this play down in the village and I still seem to think about it very often. The only reason that I could imagine I have for this constant recollection is that I have to develop a reaction to this play for my fourth paper grade. The thing is that I know this is not the reason and I still am at a loss to the simple question of why? Honestly I did not like the play at all mainly because I did not fully understand it. (Granted I did have some thoughts of my own about the performance, but those will be coming in my later blogs.) I did however find the play extremely interesting and I would love to know the actual meaning behind the entire performance. As for whether my take on it was right or not, that does not matter to me, I know how I viewed the play and I think that might have been partially right in all that I was saying but it would still interest me to know the true meaning behind it all. This is because the whole play seemed to be symbolism and deep meaning. What was the point of the giant duck, why did he have to play mini golf, why did the lady come out from behind the table, why did he wear the yellow jacket? There are countless more questions that I have for this play, most of which I have attempted to answer. The fact that this play was so abstract is what makes it so difficult to answer these questions. Also, why Wilem Defoe?

If you want to stick, you have to be different

I was in the city last night and as I was walking around I noticed all of the different sounds and attractions taking place on every sidewalk and street corner. Every single street vendor and stand in the city has there own way of calling you over to them. The salvation army guy had his little bell, while the guy at the hotdog and pretzel stand banged his tongs the cart to cause attraction to himself. They are all different, even the countless people who offer to draw a cartoon picture of yourself, the guys who sell the bootleg DVDs or the people in chinatown who sell you bags and watches all day. The point is that they all have to be different for you to notice them and to remember them for next time if you so chose to go back to them. They will either follow you and tell you what they are selling, yell out prices at you, or call you over saying what they have and how it is a great deal. It is the people on the side of the street who just sit there and do not cause attraction that have the most trouble when tying to sell things. Take the people in central park or in the subways who all play music, how many of them do you actually remember? Probably not a lot because for the most part they are all the same. Granted some are at least entertaining and that makes them memorable, but otherwise you forget about most of them very quickly and easily because they are all the same. If you don't stand out then you re just another person in the city, nothing special. The people who we probably all remember, if you have ever seen them before, are the ones who dress up and paint themselves to look like statues and move and act one you give them money. I remember over the summer there was one person in Times Square who would walk behind people and mock how they walk and act if you put money into a bucket he had in front of him. I only remembered him because he stood out and was different. Granted there are many of them in the city but they all do different things. Also, notice how I remembered he was in Times Square too? It's because Times Square is the prime example of this blog post. The city is known for Times Square because there are always people there and there are constantly new attractions and things going on. Also, there are countless broadway shows being performed on a daily basis. All of this stuff makes it stand out and also the ultimate tourist attraction. This is because they do not want to see the quiet empty side streets, they want to see the action and the bright lights. After all isn't that why they came to the city in the first place? NYC is a big city and if you don't standout then you're not going to make it.

Thanks Garmin

So I was in the city last night and as I was walking past Rockefeller Center I noticed that light show going on outside of Saks 5th Avenue. They had these giant light up snowflakes on the front of the building that would light up at different times to the tune of a christmas song. I do not know the name of it but the tune is very familiar. What I noticed the most as I was watching this light show was that I could not get the Garmin commercial out of my head.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9WxJ1aN42E&feature=rec-LGOUT-exp_fresh+div-HM

There are about 5 different versions of this commercial and this is just one of them. But the point is that Garmin has taken this widely known song and put there own twist on it so now whenever I hear this song I cannot stop thinking about the Garmin commercial. When I was in the city last night I could not get it out of my head. I doubt that I am not the only person who thinks this way about the song so Garmin has ruined this christmas song and taken it to a corporate level and, I feel, has taken the christmas out of the song. Thanks Garmin.

P.S. Here is another version of the song but I don't think that this has ruined the song as much because this is simply a parody which is not played very often. The Garmin commercial I see on T.V. all of the time and the fact that it is used to represent christmas in the commercial has taken away more from christmas because as in this next clip there are no reference to christmas at all. The fact that the Garmin commercial is about christmas and is just another advertisement takes away so much more from christmas and the original song itself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBgHTJOsi6c&feature=related

One last note, THINK ABOUT HANSEL AND GRETEL. Don't you think that there is a connection between what I just said and with Hansel and Gretel? All Garmin did was take a widely known song and put there own twist on it to be memorable. Same thing with AT&T. They just took a widely known story and put their own twist onto it. There was no deep meaning behind it, they did the same thing that Garmin did. Use things which stand out to your own advantage! Hansel and Gretel is a classic story about getting lost and now AT&T can jump in and use their new AT&T phone with GPS to add a new twist to the story. Just as Garmin used a well known song to have the audience add a new meaning to it. This is so now every time a person hears that song they will think about Garmin and every time they see Hansel and Gretel they will think about AT&T. Simple as that, both companies have just ruined two well known pieces of art.

Stickiness really did stick

So I was out to lunch the other day with my mom since I had off from school and she began to tell me a story about my neighbor's child. We have known these people for about thirteen years now and their youngest child is about five years old. My mother was over their house the other night and she told me about how the five year old went up to her and starting singing in french. When she told me this I was comepletely surprised considering that he is only five, but he is learning very basic french in his Kindergarten class. The point of my story is that he was only able to sing french because that is how they taught him to remember what they were learning. This is probably the most productive way of teaching because if you sat down a five year old and told him to follow along with a french lesson, 99% of the time the child will remember nothing from that lesson. It is only because that they were able to appeal to him and make him learn in a way that is fun and creative that he was able to remember french. I can vouch for this in two different subjects. I learned a math equation in 10th grade to the melody of "Pop goes the Weasel" and to this day I can still remember the equation perfectly. It was the quadratic equation. Also, when I was in 8th grade I remembered how to say all of the question words in spanish through a simple song to the melody of "Jingle Bells". Even when I used to do my spanish homework I would start to hum the tune and sing the song in my head just so I could remember the words. I still remember how to say them now and I haven't taken spanish class in two years. Isn't it amazing how people can sometimes remember the most random of facts just from learning them in the simplest of ways?

The library now creeps me out.....

So today around 2 o'clock I walked with one of my friends to the Axxin library so I could drop off a book to one of my other friends who i previously borrowed it from. My friend was sitting in the cafe part of the library and as I was walking through there I couldn't help but think about our stalking assignment that we had last week. That assignment has changed my whole outlook on the library and the people in there. I mean our class was just a simple group of college kids who were given an assignment and then quietly dispered into the library. Little did everyone else in the library know that they were being watched intently by this unsuspecting group of teenagers. This is exactly why I felt a little creeped out being in there today because you never do know when someone is watching you. I'd say that our class did a pretty good job at being discrete in what we did because no one was approached by their subject or taken away by public safety for stalking. Yet the more I thought about how good our class did, the more creeped out I felt. Who knows maybe Dr. Lay had another class in there at the time? There would be no way for me to point them out because our subjects for the project were completely unaware of who we were associated with (our class and professor) and more specifically who we were ourselves. This experience has definitely changed my outlook on the library, but it will not stop me from going there. If I see someone who is watching me intently I'd probably just move to another part of the library.

What is Stickiness?

This article I feel was excellent. It served its purpose through describing itself in a way. The ending of the article pulled all of these ideas together for me, in that it created a new hypothesis for my views on this reading. This is because once I read it, it had similar effects on me about Shelley Jackson's piece, but only the part where I understood it and nothing else. It seemed to me that once I finished reading this piece I realized what the writer was doing. They were using stickiness to describe stickiness. By this I mean that the article was an example of stickiness in itself. It was creative by using different examples of stickiness (the urban legends) and by appealing to people, I felt, by being extremely simple. It most of the characteristics which were listed towards the end of the article when they were broken down into six different parts. This article definitely did stick for me. It did so much that I was able to read it in two parts, meaning that I took a break, went to my job and came back a few hours later and remembered what they were talking about enough that I could pick up reading where I left off and post a blog about it, without having to go back and reread most of it.

It even appealed to me in the sense that I agreed with what it was saying for the most part. I think that stickiness is a simple, creative story which appeals highly to people's emotions and also just their sense in general. Meaning that they simply liked it for whatever reason (comedy, truth, etc.) I think that through those ways it is the only way which you will get the majority of the public audience to remember what it is you are making a case about. There might be some people who will remember it for their own personal reason, whether they hate it or have some personal passion for it, but in order to get it to stick with the majority of the public, your case has to be extremely memorable on all levels so that it will indeed appeal to most individuals.

I like to think of the commercials that we saw in class this semester as a prime example of stickiness. If our class was asked tomorrow if they remembered what happened in both the Asian Pantene commercial and the Hansel and Gretel AT&T commercial, my guess is that they would indeed remember it. This is not because we have watched them so much, as it is that they sticked to people. They stuck because they were creative and that is the most important part in all of this. Creativity is needed whether the case is good or bad. Hansel and Gretel stuck because it was creative and different and it was also a fairly decent commercial. The Pantene commercial on the other hand was, I felt, extremely bad, yet we all remember it because it was creative and different. If we think of mass media and how much simply plain bad material there is on television alone today, there are countless cases that are terrible yet still creative. Think of last season on American Idol, the bikini girl who went to the auditions and didn't make it very far at all. Yet at the end of the season people were still talking about her even though she was such a bad singer. Also, the song "LOL :)" (yes, lol smiley face is indeed the title) I personally like, but it is just such a stupid concept of a song, but it is after all creative and this is why it sticks with people, whether they like it or not. I asked some of my friends if they had heard the song and if they liked it or not and out of the four people that I asked, three of them said that they had heard it even though they didn't like it. They only remembered it because it was so creatively bad and because of this, so memorable.

This is simply how mass media works, sometimes the worse it is, the more memorable it is. Yet this is also another way for people to get their point across to people. If you think of it, it might seem more logical for ad campaigns to use more stupid tactics in their commercials simply because they stick to people more. Geico is the perfect example because their caveman ad campaign is easily the worst ad campaign out there now, yet people still remember Geico and continue to use their services all the time. Lets hope, for the sake of mass media and advertising, that ad campaigns don't get more like Geicos and that producers will stick to using good creative ideas in their ads.

Why we stalked.....

I feel that this whole assignment, in a way, was another method to get us to pay attention. I mean that is what stalkers do, they watch every move of their subject to such an extent that it becomes creepy. This is what we did in the library the other day, we sat down, viewed our subjects to great extents and took notes on them. This project was for us to be able to be aware of our surroundings and to be able to notice the things which we would otherwise not overlook.

To me this relates to the video clip from the movie "The Pink Panther" that we watched in class last week. The whole point of that clip, for us anyway, was to think about asking the right questions, whereas the point of this assignment was to notice the right things. Our whole focus in class for the past week or so has been about taking notice, asking the right questions, and being able to deduce meaning from them. All of this is exactly what we were required to do in the library yesterday. Our worksheets asked us to take notes on what our subject was doing, provide metaphors for those actions and then to describe our own take on them (deduce the meaning of it all). having just realized all this just now when I received the email about blog, I now have more of an understanding about what this assignment was truly meant for. It was to get us to open up our senses and to be attentive.

Stalking.....

Today our assignment for english was one which I never thought I would ever receive. We were instructed to meet in the lobby of the library and stalk people. As our class walked in my professor handed us a worksheet to fill out and then it was up to us to find people.

As I was walking through the library I walked right up to the center and sat down on the couches by the row of computers. I think the girl that I was stalking was kind of on to me and probably very creeped out. Her posture in a way gave me that impression. She was sitting there doing her paper, yet she kept aware of her surroundings, mainly me. I was totally not discrete about it either, when I sat on the couch she was the person who was sitting the closest to me at the row of computers. Also, I sat facing her directly to make it even more obvious. The part that I think could have possibly gave it away that I was stalking her was that when I got up to get my coffee I went back to the exact seat in front of her and sat facing her again and continued to take notes. She also kept glancing over her shoulder every two minutes while she was at the computer. I feel that I might have distracted this person greatly from her actual assignment for the sake of my own. Oops. I do feel kind of bad though because she might have had an important paper to do, but I wasn't sitting there for that long so it's alright.

In a way my subject kind of deserved to be stalked because when I was walking over to find a person, she kept glancing over towards me to see what I was doing. It was a general glance it was kind of a "what are you doing over here, I'm just going to watch what you do" kind of glance. It was a little creepy so I decided that it was time for her to be creeped out back and that she was going to be my subject for this assignment. In a way she brought it upon herself because she got my attention by glancing over to me about five times in thirty seconds.

My subject however was not very interesting, she was just another average ordinary student in the library. By this I mean that she looked and dressed like everyone else and also was sitting down typing and keeping to herself, not doing anything out of the ordinary what so ever. My subject was wearing sweatpants, a hoodie, uggs and I am pretty sure she had a blackberry with her too. This to me is what I mean by ordinary, not saying that everyone at Hofstra is like that because they aren't, but because at my high school this was almost how every girl looked day after day, all she was missing was a gigantic iced coffee. She also carried around a bag and a scarf too, along with about three different books that she was using to type her paper. Even after I had been sitting down there and taking notes based on the worksheet that we had, she continued to glance over towards me to see what I was doing. After all I did make it kind of obvious, but the assignment wasn't to be discrete. She certainly wasn't discrete in how she continued to glance at me, but I was not her only focus while I was sitting there. She kept looking at her books and then taking a pause, putting her hands on her head in both frustration and thought it seemed like. After that she'd type out about a sentence or two. I think the entire time I was there she only typed about maybe half a page in total. Other than that she did not have many interactions at all. She did not go on facebook or look down at her phone at all. The only things on her mind were me and the paper that she was typing not very diligently.

My overall take on this assignment was at first it felt extremely odd to be doing, but after a while I just thought of it as a school assignment that had to be done and ruled out in my mind how actually wrong it was, just for the 45 minutes that we had to do this for. It was definitely an interesting assignment though, one which I don't expect to get again.

Welcome back Billy Collins.....

After watching the video of Billy Collins read his poem, it changed my outlook on poetry for a short amount of time. I personally do not like poetry at all, but his poem did appeal to me greatly. This is only because it made a mockery of what love poems stood for and completely made a sham out of them. Honestly when we first watched the video of him for the first time in class together, it took me a few minutes to realize exactly what he was doing, but once I did realize it, I greatly enjoyed the poem. He was able to pick a part aspects of love poems and turn them into nonsense. He used all of the symbolism against itself in a way. By doing this he showed people love poems in a new light. Billy Collins was able to expose love poems for what they truly are, immense amounts of cheesy symbolism. I do feel that by reading the poem to people it had a greater impact on them. If I had sat down to read this poem I probably would have felt as though it was cheesy just like most love poems, but the way that he read it made it come through to me. It was the slightly sarcastic tone in his voice and also his very relaxed almost not caring attitude when reading it that showed people right out there that it's intent was indeed to make fun of love poems. Billy Collins' whole feel for the this poem was even conveyed through reading it. Even though it was his poem, he wanted the audience to laugh, that was how it seemed he measured his success for this poem. If the audience had been silent and emotional about how beautiful the symbolism was in the text, then it would have been a failure on the part of Billy Collins because he would have simply helped out every other poet who writes the junk that he was making fun of. He conveyed his attitude perfectly and had a strong sense of sarcasm in his voice which made it come across to the audience perfectly. By having Billy Collins, one of the greatest poets of our time, turn love poems into a sham, shows me that there is still some hope left in poetry and that we have not turned the english language into the terrible one that George Orwell feared it had become. Also, on a side note, he was not writing for the university at all in this poem, this was for himself and the public. Good job Billy Collins, you've made me not hate poetry as much an more.

Every dog has it's day.....

After reading the article "What The Dog Saw" I felt an extreme sense of relief that it was not another shelley Jackson article. This article was coherent and kept its focus. Granted at some points it did tail off, but only to talk about material which was related to the subject at hand. This article was about Cesar Millan, the dog whisperer. It focused on his connection with both dogs and humans as well. It began by telling us different stories of the various dogs which he has encountered and trained. He is able to do this by using his body language to keep the animals in check. His main focus is all about how he presents himself. There are also some professionals mentioned in this article who interpret his body language and how he acts with the animals. At one point it is even mentioned that he is dancing with them. I do not agree with this, I think that his body language is very strong but no where near dancing. He is not literally dancing with the animals, that's a little absurd. His relationship with the animals is all conveyed through his body, otherwise he has no way of communicating with them. Dogs do not speak english. It is all about how he positions himself in front of the animals and in his chair when he sits down, the way that he situates his body forward show that he is in charge and is not backing off. Even when he does sit back, he places his hands in front of him to still keep the same authority in himself. He is a master of body language and is able to convey it nearly perfectly with the dogs.

Cesar also uses three other components which he uses to train the dogs are exercise, discipline and affection. He is able to combine all of these so that the animals become well trained. He takes the dogs on hikes when they stay at his program, he keeps his authority, and he also shows compassion for them as well. When all of these are put together it is almost how we would raise a child. We must show authority and show them who is the boss, but it is also necessary to show them compassion and to be affectionate towards them, because without this we would be overly demanding and controlling and would therefore receive no affection back. This is all necessary to develop a healthy relationship.

Also mentioned in this article is Cesar's relationship with his wife. He does not see marriage as a two way street, he views it as his wife is there to tend to his every wish. His wife does not feel this way and wants him to go therapy where he discovers that he must all make connections with people as well as the dogs.

The last piece that this article leaves you with is when it talk about the 3 year old who is autistic and his care giver. The woman who works with him is also excellent in what she does. She uses music to try and control the child. But more importantly she mimics his own motions and then tries to establish connections with the child through the music being played. By this I mean that she moves the childs legs to the beat of the music in order to try and calm the child down. I personally do not understand how this helps the child that much. I see that she got the child to relax somewhat, but I do not understand how.

This article was overall very well written, but it did lose me at some points. I was partially confused about the part with the baby and his therapist when she begins to work with him. This article also seemed like a hypertext, since it was written online, but more so that it connected other stories as well, all referring back to the original idea about the connections and relationships with people and dogs and people and other people based on the ideas of authority and compassion.

More Shelley Jackson

4) Is Jackson in favor of hypertexts because it is easier to persuade a reader by linking the reader with other texts?

This is one of the questions from Chelsea's blog and also the one that I chose to write about. I think that the Jackson in this piece is truly against hypertest. For me, this was a terrible thing to read because it kept getting off track, and not off track in a good way where there is a side story, but the story itself just got lost in nothing. At points in this article I went back to the beginning of the paragraph that I was reading, just so I could get some sort of understanding as to what I was reading. Every paragraph that she had for the most part started out fine, but as it went further n, I believe that Shelley got lost herself. It only seemed that she started a new paragraph once she had completely gotten of topic and almost as though she was lost in the woods, would jump onto another path, get lost again and find another path. My mind could not handle this. I hate it when writers get off track of their original idea, but it does not bother me as much when authors have side stories to get lost in, not just random metaphors as we see that Shelley has done here.

As I was reading this last night I began to wonder that perhaps Shelley had written this so terribly for a reason. Maybe she wrote this as the epitome of what a hypertext would be like, just as a way that she could completely denounce it. This was the only reason that I was able to come up with for this article being so bad and uncomprehensible. I am curious about the effect that the linear version had on readers, but I would not want to read it to find out myself.

Questions for Shelley Jackson

1. Was that really your intention as I pointed out, to write about a hypertext in a hypertext?

2. Would you have written this in linear text?

3. If you had, do you think that it would have the same effect on people while they were reading it?

4. Why did you chose to use so many metaphors in your article?

5. Do you think that people are able to comprehend better if there are metaphors?

6. Why do all of your paragraphs open up with a negative statement?

Why??

After reading Shelley Jackson's piece entitled "Stitch Bitch" I did not want to read another thing at all. I found this to be extremely confusing and lacking a certain point. It did however have a general concept of "hypertext". This article was for me was a terrible read. Her entire writing was drowned out with way too many metaphors. It began to make me wonder what I was actually reading about at a certain point because she lost me in all of the unnecessary context.

After I had gotten about half way done reading this piece, I for some reason remembered what we read as one our first homework assignments of the year about George Orwell. It was his piece about the english language and indeed how bad it had gotten when in written form. His idea about trying to use big words and metaphors to try and spice up your writing, I feel, parallels mine. I think that Shelley Jackson did exactly this. She lost me in her writing because of how she tried to formulate her ideas. The only parts of her writing which seemed to make the most sense were the first two or maybe three of every new topic. After that, in most paragraphs, she went on and on and began to lose focus of what it was that she was writing about. She kept connecting her topic to different ideas, but they always connected back to her thoughts on hypertext. After reading "Banished Body", (one of the paragraphs in her article) I began to realize what it was that she was trying to do. As I was reading that entire paragraph/list it hit me that she was writing a hypertext while writing about hypertext. By this I mean that all of the things that she listed in "Banished Body" all could be found in her actual article.

"It is unstable. It changes from moment to moment, in its experience both of itself and of the world."

"It has no center, but a roving focus. (It "reads" itself.)"

-Shelley Jackson

It is these two which stood out to me the most, mainly because they are the most obvious in her writing. Granted after reading this list it changed my whole outlook on this article, but I still do not like it. This list merely made me recognize what it was that she was doing. This did help me somewhat while reading it, but I still think that her article was terribly overdone in metaphors, which in the end made me get lost and lose track of what I was in fact reading about.

So Billy Collins.....??

My top six questions:

1. Is there supposed to be any deep symbolism in the objects chosen?

2. Was there any past experience in our life that made you want to mock love poems?

3. Why was it those first two lines that you chose to write about?

4. What was the rest of that poem like?

5. What made you want to criticize someone's writing like that?

6. What magazine did you get the article from?

My favorite question:

2. Was there any past experience in your life that made you want to mock love poems?

My honest guess to this question is that there was not a past experience. I know this is probably not the response that you thought I would use, but I have my reasons for it. Perhaps instead of their being a single past experience in his life, there has been many. Thinking about this seems perfectly logical to me. Being the great poet that he is, Billy Collins has probably not only written countless poems, but he has also probably read a great deal too. Perhaps it was that after reading so many of these love poems that all have no meaning, with their pointless symbolism always thrown in, it was about time, in Billy Collins' mind, that someone should write the total opposite of a love poem. In this piece that Billy Collins wrote, he completely mocks everything that poetry stands for. He turns what could be a love poem into a complete and total bash of the first two lines of someone else's poem. It's unfortunate for the author of the poem that BIlly Collins took the first to lines from to be criticized. There he was probably thinking about how great his poem is, with being published in a magazine and all, and there goes Billy Collins tearing his work apart. Billy Collins turns those first two lines into a complete mess. He makes us all realize in a way that all of this pointless writing which seems to be so deep and have so much meaning in of its symbolism, is actually pointless and has nothing to do with love at all. Just in the symbolism that Collins chooses to use, everything in that poem is turned into a sham. I personally enjoyed Collins' poem because I do not like poetry where authors try to be deep and hide meaning in their words. I prefer my reading to be straight forward, no matter what type of material the reading may be. For me this was the perfect poem because it just made fun of love poems entirely.

Why does Lethem find obsessiveness about influence (aka "plagiarism") a disadvantage for artists?

This article by Lethem is based entirely off of plagiarism and all of its forms. He shows us examples of plagiarism in books, movies, and music. Throughout this article he continues to flood our minds with examples of what should be considered plagiarism, but is not. He opens this article with an example of a story from 1916 which was later reused in another novel forty years later. Another example used is Bob Dylan who uses many lines from movies and plays in his music. Lethems idea on plagiarism is that especially in literature, ideas are going to be reused. The part that he obsesses over in his article is how it is a disadvantage for artists. The idea of usin reoccuring themes is a complete and total block to young artists today. My personal idea on artists today is that they are going to plagiarize in some form or another because it is impossible to not. Themes are a recurring idea and when young artists are given examples whether it be in music, art or literature, they are going to remember some of the ideas and unwilling use them. Or some might chose to just copy ideas directly. Also in his article Lethem writes how even when some things are placed into collages, they simply jog a persons memory. The objects do not serve the full purpose of being put out there to be interpreted by others. Since these ideas have already been used so many countless times in the past, the people who are viewing them now can not have an original feel for the ideas. Granted it is possible that some students might interpret things in an uncommon way, but the basis of that idea was most likely already published or thought of by someone else before them.

One other reason why it might be that Lethem is obsessing in this article is that even though there is always some room for modification in art, today it will most likely be thought of as stealing and plagiarism. He uses examples of Walt Disney in his defense, mentioning how he could have been yelled at for stealing from Buster Keaton's Steamboat Bill, Jr. or even the existence of a real mouse. Lethem's point here is that artists should be able to, as he writes, "be free to capture an image without compensating the source." In this he means that people should be free to create without having to worry about who thought of it first and if it was created already. The artist should not have to worry about giving credit for everything tht they do. The problem here is that today almost everything is protected by copyright laws and is so limited in its use by others.

"But the truth is that with artists pulling on one side and corporations pulling on the other, the loser is the collective public imagination from which we were nourished in the first place, and whose existence as the ultimate repository of our offerings makes the work worth doing in the first place."

In this Lethem is concluding obviously that the public is losing out in the long run of copyrighting and the prevetion of plagiarism. This is only because on the one side pulling, the artists want to copyright their work and keep that ownership so that no one else can copy it, while on the other side, mass media is trying to take ideas and publicize them into mainstream ones. With both of these sides fighting and being put at a standstill, the public is losing out because we are now presented with more and more bad advertisements and main stream garbage because artists are so particular about what they create so that the media has such a hard time getting to it. An example of how the media has gotten to literature and used it in a positive way is in the Hansel and Gretel commercial. AT&T was able to put a positive and commercialized idea on it. They were able to use art and transform, which it should always happen. Art is never meant to be unchanged, it is art because it is creativity, and as long as there is a human mind somewhere, there will always be room for more change and creativity. An example in which we see the collective public imagination suffering is in any Geico commercial. They have the worst advertisement campaign other than the gecko. The cavemen are a terrible idea I feel and I personally do not like the idea of the pile of money with the googlely eyes either. There are no good ideas for the commercials because they, the media, are not pulling at any forms of art (literature, movies, music, etc.) to get decent ideas. Without any art to get our ideas from, the minds of the public suffer and struggle for creativity.

Mark Twain

"I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English–it is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it; don’t let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in. When you catch an adjective, kill it. No, I don’t mean utterly, but kill most of them–then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are wide apart. An adjective habit, or a wordy, diffuse, flowery habit, once fastened upon a person, is as hard to get rid of as any other vice."

Letter to D. W. Bowser, 20 March 1880

This passage written by Mark Twain is an example of how I feel writing should be. By this I mean that I think writing should be short, sweet and to the point, there is no need for the "fluff and flowers". All this does is drown out your original ideas in words and phrases that are unnecessary and can just completed be avoided. When this happens your audience will begin to lose focus and forget what the original point of your writing actually was. When Mark Twain explains how to use adjective and writes "They weaken when they are close together" he is explaining how when you use too many adjectives together it begins to make your writing lose focus. Do not over describe what you are trying to convey, just make your case clear and do not go overboard with adjectives. This will make your writing less meaningful because you are focusing so much on over describing one detail of your writing when you should focus your time on your writing as a whole.

"The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is that you really want to say."
Mark Twain’s Notebook, 1902-1903

What Mark Twain is trying to convey here is that you should only begin writing once you have all of your thoughts clearly laid out. When sitting down to write, you do not want to just jump into your writing because you often do not have all of your thoughts organized correctly and will not write your best material. This is a perfect example of how I write, because I go through many drafts of what I want to write before I find the perfect wording for it. Often when I write an essay I will type about 5 different versions of the same sentence until I like what I have. Then eventually I will pick a final version of what I want to keep in my writing.

Hansel and Gretel

Today in class we all watched the AT&T commercial which was based around Hansel and Gretel. I personally liked this commercial a lot because it appealed to two different things which I like very much. The first is NYC which is the city they were portrayed to be in, and also christmas. This commercial reminded me very much of christmas because in the beginning it seemed as though you might hear that opening music in a christmas commercial. Also because people in the commercial seemed to be wearing heavy/warm clothes from the few glimpses that we got of them. To me it seems as though I completely missed the point of the commercial, which was to switch to AT&T, but since I already have that service, I think its alright. However once we observed and made inferences off the commercial in class, then I realized the deeper meaning behind it all. It truly was an in depth commercial if all of the things that we mentioned in class were meant to be in the commercial. For example by having the store closing behind them in the background, it shows how it was getting late and the children were all alone and probably did not have any other options besides using the phone. We also however saw the flaws of this commercial, which were how the children took the subway and at the end, instead of going back the way they came from, they continued to walk forward and take another way home. Since this commercial is about Hansel and Gretel then the director should have had them walk back the same way they came from since the story about Hansel and Gretel is to retrace your steps and find your way home. The other flaw with this commercial is that the children are getting off the subway platform in the beginning, which raises the question of how did they navigate on the subway? Did they leave bread crumbs, use a map or the phone or anything to help them get around? Or did these children somehow have an intuitive knowledge of the Manhattan subway system? All in all I think it was a good commercial since like I said about how it appealed to me. I think that for a cell phone commercial it was fine and does not need to be thought into or criticized too much.

Welcome to online writing

So here I am at Hofstra, and I am blogging. Writing online makes me feel.....like I'm asking people to listen to my ideas. By putting out all of my thoughts onto the internet, its just a way for people to get their ideas across to you. When people blog its usually because they feel strongly about a point, where as I am blogging as an assignment for my class. I wonder if I'll get any comments on here, I kind of hope I don't unless their in support of whatever I'm writing. I really don't want to have opposition on my blog because then it just looks kind of dumb that people have wasted their time to find my ideas and to actually oppose what I am thinking. I feel like with this post I might get some negative response. Then again it will probably be from those people that I am writing about now the ones who are actually using their free time for this, unless of course it is from people in my class or my professor, where we are doing this as a project. It's kind of odd for me to think about how people actually use their time to go online and to see what other people are talking about and to use their own time as well to have discussions with people. What annoys me the most is how people will start arguments on blogs or other types of postings on the internet. To me its just a waste of time to post negative comments or comments at all for that matter. What exactly is the point of posting negative things? If you overhear someone on the street talking about something that you might disagree with, are you going to walk over to them and start an argument? Or are you simply going to be the bigger person and move on? I feel these same circumstances apply to the internet, what is the point of starting an argument on a blog? Anyway this whole blog now has become about people being negative, I think that blogging in the first place is kind of pointless, but who knows, maybe from this I'll start to like blogging more. Let's see how this all works out.