My Subject

My subject sat in a chair reading a handful of papers. His body was relaxed but he was holding tightly to the pages in his hands. One of his legs was crossed and his bag was under his legs, right in front of the chair he was sitting in. He was of average size wearing a jacket, sweater, and jeans.
For the most part he kept to himself, not interacting with anyone else in the room. He did not move or speak much during my period of observation. All he focused on was his papers and the information contained on them. He wasn't distracted by any of the filming or talking going on around him.
At first glance the subject didn't seem very interesting because of a lack of interaction and motion. However after taking note of his more subtle movements and determination to read despite the action going on around him he became more interesting. He was very dedicated to finishing his reading so the papers he had must have been very important to him.

Stickiness

Stickiness in writing is the degree to which a concept appeals to you and then lasts with you. If an idea has no stickiness, no one will understand it or remember it. An idea with no stickiness may just be unappealing to the reader, even if it is a well thought out concept. The stickiest ideas are the ones that stay with the reader for the rest of his life and help shape his own opinions and ideas in the future. The way an idea is presented can even have an effect on its stickiness. If the idea is very easily digestible by the reader it will stick right to them, whereas one they have to struggle to understand may never latch onto them because they decide its not worth the effort. A good idea should stick right away with no effort on the reader's part.
For the most part I would tend to agree with the way the Heaths define stickiness because they mention how interest plays a part in what makes some ideas stick and others disappear. An idea must first and foremost be appealing in its construction if it will be accepted by the reader and stick to them. Without any interest in the idea it is more likely to slip away from the reader. The main object of any writer should be to have as many of their points stick to his reader as possible, so that they might travel with that reader and be carried on in his own ideas that will hopefully stick to someone else one day.

Library Writing

The observations we made in the library taught us the importance of attention to detail as well as the importance of environment. The activity helped us as writers because it forced us to think about details and descriptions, and then made us come up with metaphors for those descriptions. Good metaphors and figurative language can improve writing and so the activity helped us come up with them one step at a time, first by making us focus on the details we would normally overlook and then enhancing them. We were conditioning ourselves to pay attention to the little things that may seem inconsequential at first but when included in a piece of writing make it that much better because they show the author really thought about the environment of the characters. The details make the description more believable, the metaphors make the description more interesting and the combination makes the overall writing more sophisticated.

What The Dog Saw

In the essay, Gladwell says that it is important to establish your dominance over a dog by not giving it special treatment and standing in certain ways to communicate to the dog your actions through body language. You have to assert yourself over the dog without being too aggressive, otherwise the dog will start acting aggressively in turn. The key is finding a balance that gives the dog some freedom, but there can be no question of who is in charge. Caesar stops his dogs' play time exactly when he means to and always confronts aggressive dogs without shying away. He needs to establish that he is the alpha because dogs are pack animals. If a dog does not respect you it will continue to misbehave and never learn to be controlled.

The essay also gives insight into interaction between humans. As demonstrated by the part about the autistic boy, humans also need to have authority established in a non-threatening way. Confidence is important when interacting with other people, but coming on too strongly can be just as harmful as letting people walk all over you. Only by establishing yourself to the other party in an assertive way can you gain their respect, but trying to execute authority over someone too soon can make them resent you. Also, just as a child is punished when it does wrong, dogs need to have boundaries established as well. You will never teach manners to a child if you idolize everything they do and never point out when they are doing something wrong.

Peter's Questions

3. How can a reader better navigate through "Stitch Bitch"?

I think the only way to navigate through this text is to re-read it a few times, because it's definitely confusing at face value. She writes with confusing language and constantly asserts that things we think are true aren't. If you take it section by section I think it starts to make more sense.


4. How can the body be fully paralleled to writing?

I'm not sure it can be fully paralleled because although normal writing needs a structure the way our bodies have spines and bones, the hypertext Shelly talks about doesn't follow standard conventions, and she even says that each part of it is a brain thinking for itself (or something along those lines). Hypertext is always changing and evolving. Because not all forms of writing follow the body analogy I don't think they can be fully paralleled.

Stitch Bitch Questions

1. What is a hypertext?
2. Why does Shelly start each section off with a statement saying things are not as they appear?
3. Why is her intro so confusing and wordy?
4. How is hypertext built to be different than normal, linear novels?
5. Why are linear novels with a story considered "conventional" by Shelly?
6. If hypertext doesn't know where it's going, how do you write one?
   

Being Grumpy

I think there's a lot of truth to this article because I've found that I can think much more clearly in a bad mood than in a good one. As far as all the tests talked about in the article go, I can't really comment on them because I'm not really a scientist, although they do sound like good tests. But I definitely think I write better in a bad mood. It's easier to think about the topic at hand when there aren't another million thoughts going through your head about how nice it is outside or all the fun things you'd rather be doing at the moment. When you're writing in a bad mood it's also easier to really let your emotions out on the page, which will most likely lead to better writing than just a list of all the nice things that are going on in your life.

Mike's Questions

Why is the beloved the bread and the knife?

I think it's supposed to sound like the beloved is something that can sustain the author the way bread can fill up a person up. Or when you include the next line about the wine it sounds like some sort of Biblical allusion.

Why does he repeatedly ensure his beloved that she is the bread and the knife?

Probably for humor because it's sort of a ridiculous comparison to make.

Is there any relation between the objects of comparison?

I don't think so, and that's part of the point of the whole poem. They're just unrelated objects that sound nice to be compared with but when you really think about it, they don't make sense together. Collins is pointing this out by making even more outrageous comparisons than the original.

Are the objects of comparison random, or are they each chosen for a specific reason?

I think they were chosen specifically to be random, meaning he wanted them to seem incoherent because he feels all poems that rely on arbitrary comparisons to be incoherent.

Why is the poem entitled "Litany"?

I think I've heard the word "litany" used before when talking about some sort of prayer so maybe it's another call back to the original poem since the only lines he took from it were about bread and wine, which also have religious meanings besides their literal ones. That's the best I can do.

Is the poem just a joke?

Absolutely.

Marissa's Questions

Is Collins plagiarizing or is he simply just "rewriting" a failed poem?

I don't think of it as plagiarism because it's a parody of the original poem and he admits to taking the first two lines from another source so it doesn't seem to me like he's trying to take credit for the original idea, especially since he is poking fun at the original idea.

Why does the poet steal the first 2 lines (You are the bread and the knife, the crystal goblet and the wine) from a typical western love poem instead of any other lines?

He probably stole those opening lines so he could establish that his own poem was meant to be attached to that other poem. He could have just listed the comparisons without first relating back to the original love poem but then there would be not point of reference to what he is parodying.

Is Collins' main point of this poem to make fun of typical western love poems?

I believe it is. I don't think it's an attack on the specific poem that inspired him to write it but an attack on the general style of the original poem.

Does Collins' use of ridiculous comparisons really insult his beloved instead of flattering her?

I think so. He starts out with seemingly nice compliments but then tells his beloved all the things she is not, and then tells her how great he is. I think the comparisons are meant to insult the beloved in the poem in order to get his point across about the poor quality of the style of western love poems.

Why does Collins go on to flatter himself towards the end of the poem?

I think the flattery is mainly there to add more humor to the poem and make light of the comparisons used in other poems.

Would you rather be the bread and knife or the evening paper blowing in the alley? Why?

Hmmm... The bread and the knife have some sort of spiritual symbolism, I think, but the image of the paper blowing through the alley is sort of peaceful to me. It makes me think of just floating along on a wind, so I would probably choose that.

6 Questions

1. What does Collins really think about his poem's subject? Does he really love her or is it just a sarcastic slant on love poems that compare the beloved to objects in nature using meaningless metaphors?
2. How does he really feel about himself? Is the second half of the poem purely sarcastic?
3. Does Collins really dislike poems based in comparison and imagery or was he just trying to be humorous in his parody?
4. How would the original poem's author feel about Collins' adaptation.
5. Is Collins' poem a love poem?
6. What is the meaning behind the uncertain terms Collins uses, such as "maybe", "however", and "somehow"?

Lethem 2

Lethem finds our obsession with plagiarism a disadvantage for writers because it creates this panic in the writer's brain about whether or not readers will perceive something they've written as being stolen from somewhere else. There is this sense of judgment to see if the writing is original, and even if the author did not consciously or purposefully borrow any ideas for their writing, it will be marred if anyone suspects they did. Lethem feels that people should be more accepting of the exchange of ideas and embrace it. His main point is that the struggle between writers and plagiarism laws hurts the readers because a writer may be unable to create a true masterpiece that weaves together many different ideas with their own if some law or corporation tells them they aren't allowed to. To Lethem there is this great collective imagination from which all ideas spring and he doesn't understand how any one party can claim ownership of an idea that came from this collective set of thoughts to begin with. If all ideas were recognized as belonging to everyone, Lethem argues, great new combination of thoughts may come forth that can flow back into the collective imagination and lead to more new thoughts. But this process can't occur if everyone is claiming ideas to be their own and stopping others from using them. If the flow of ideas if halted there can be no true great writing, only recycled old ideas because there will never be anything new added to them.

Mark Twain

In the reading, Twain's primary point was that writing shouldn't be too wordy. He says that too many adjectives actually lessens their impact,which is something I agree with. When you use too many adjectives together they lose their meaning because it seems like you are overstating your point. One really profound word is always better than a collection of overused and understated ones. Twain also warns against fluff sentences in your writing, which I also believe to be sound advice. Any intelligent person can pick out fluff anyway so there's no point in putting it in since it only makes writing more convoluted. Twain's view definitely applies to blogging because brevity and conciseness in a blog can make it easier to read. I'm less likely to read a long wordy post online than one that's only a few paragraphs for a couple of reasons. The most important one is that I really don't like reading any form of extended writing online so sometimes I lose interest in something that is too long even if I do find it compelling. The other reason why I feel blogs shouldn't be too wordy is that someone who is able to get their point across clearly in just a few paragraphs is probably a better writer than one that needs pages of text to accomplish their task.

Jonathan Lethem's "The Ecstasy of Influence"

The text isn't so much an excuse for plagiarism or telling you to pass someone else's work off as your own as it is a statement that everything is borrowed from somewhere, whether intentionally or not, and that that is the beauty of writing. More readers nowadays should be more forgiving of writing that seems too similar to another's because it's very difficult, if not impossible, to come up with a totally original thought. It's a tricky subject because the sharing of ideas among writers is something to be celebrated but you hate to see someone profiting off of someone else's work without giving them credit. If one writer comes up with a thought and another one comes along and packages it better and makes it famous, the first writer probably would feel cheated but the second writer probably wouldn't feel like they did anything wrong. Of course, it's hard to say if the idea really belonged to that first writer to begin with. But in a way that's what makes the sharing of ideas so interesting because thoughts get passed around and everyone that hears/reads them can interpret them differently and use them to different ends. That is the ecstasy of influence that Lethem is talking about. The danger comes when someone hears a thought and doesn't add their own influence it or take something away from it and reuses it for the same purpose as the person they got it from, because then there is nothing unique about what they are writing.

AT&T Commercial Analysis

I thought the commercial did a good job in serving its primary goal of being a commercial and making people want to buy an AT&T phone with a GPS. It's very visual, with basically no dialogue and yet it was very clear from the imagery that the boy and girl were supposed to be Hansel and Gretal and that they were lost in New York. It shows that the the GPS could come in handy, and it has a nice happy ending. When looking at the commercial as closely as we did in class, you realize the story doesn't make a lot of sense (why didn't they use the phone right away? how did they get there?) but that's not the point. The point is "we've fooled you into watching our commercial by drawing you in with Hansel and Gretal, now our logo and phone are stuck in your head", and the logo at the end makes that perfectly clear.

Writing At Hofstra

So here I am at Hofstra, and I am blogging. Writing online makes me feel...

...like a bit of a liar, because I'm not actually at Hofstra writing this. But more to the point, writing online makes me appreciate how far we've come technologically. I'm used to writing stuff online by now, I do it a lot, whether on Facebook, Twitter, AIM, or commenting on a video or post on another site. I can't imagine most people older than I am ever expected the internet to become the normal medium for sharing ideas in our society. But I grew up with a computer, and I guess I always assumed they would just keep getting better and better, not that I was thinking in the context of improving as a means of communication. I just assumed I'd be able to do more and more with one as I got older, and I was right. Personally I like the fact that communication has gotten so much easier. Opinions are shared much faster on things like posts and videos that wouldn't even have existed to comment on years ago before the internet became so widely used. I like the idea of being able to tell someone something or show them something right away, or that if I want to write something and post it online, I can be reasonably sure that someone somewhere is going to find and and read it. It's sort of a scary thought but in a way its kind of cool because that person would not have any idea what I was thinking if we had never entered into the digital age.