Born to the Den in Durotar, Sordor is a level 17 (but hopefully not for long) Troll Warrior. In her humble beginnings she learned Herbalism at level 5. She battled her way across Durotar until she made her way to Orgrimmar which she currently calls her home (at least that's where her Hearthstone takes her). After soaking up the metropolis that is Orgimmar in all its splendor, she has now herself roaming the Barrens battling through the territories trying to bring peace to the region and honor to the Horde.
She currently wields the two-handed Claymore sword and long distance throwing daggers, making her a formidable foe. She is currently trying to learn how to use a bow and arrows to increase her long distance damage during battles.
Yay for Dr. Ulmer visiting! I've been looking forward to this discussion time for a while, and I feel like I'm going to get an opportunity to meet some form of celebrity. I have that butterflies-in-tummy feeling followed by sheer speechlessness (which for me is saying something because I'm never at a loss for words) What questions can I really ask? What are going to be appropriate and not make me look unintelligent? Here we go...and I feel the major need to apologize before I ever even get started...
1. When tackling a topic like the internet, do you ever feel that your books and writing will quickly become obsolete? Already there have been many major changes on how commerce and communication take place online since Internet Invention was published (facebook, skype, google wave, etc), how do you feel these will effect the EmerAgency? 2. What do you think has been the greatest internet phenomenon (whether it be facebook, blogs, or whatever) that has changed or has the potential to change the way Mystorys are approached and presented?
Ulmer gave the assignment for the entertainment discourse right off the bat at the beginning of the section. He instructed to find cinema and/or books that we remembered from our childhood and give an account of what we remembered. (127) There were a few things that immediately came to mind, but the top choice was a book I was read many times as a child titled Pancake Pie, written by Sven Nordqvist. I have discussed in past blogs and waves my horrible memory, and I didn't remember much about the plot of the book. The most vivid memory I had about the book prior to going back and reading it again (I amazingly was able to locate it at my parents house) was the page in the book where the travels of the main character are documented by a dotted line that weaves its way around the page. But really even more than that I reamember the feeling of lying in bed listening to my Mom read the story to me. Story time was a big deal in my house growing up prior to bed time, and my Mom was never stingy with reading. When I began to reread the story for the first time in years, I only made it past the first page before I had to start reading it aloud. It almost seemed wrong to keep it to myself. As the words filtered through the air of my bedroom (ironically enough I was reading it right before going to bed) I was immediatly reminded of the warm-fuzzy feeling I had as I cozied up under the covers of my twin bed to listen to my Mom read to me. I felt like I was five again. It was really great.
For the entertainment component of the Mystory I recorded myself reading the story aloud. (please start the video now if you have not already) There are no pictures, just audio because the words are what were more important to me as I reread it. It was hearing the story aloud that took me back to childhood and reminded me of why I liked the story of Festus and Mercury so much. I also like the idea of having components to the Mystory that stimulate all the senses..because life doesn't just effect your eyes. You feel it, smell it, taste it, etc. and if my life is going to be boiled down into all these Mystory discourse components then I feel I should attempt to stimulate as many senses as I can so the viewer can get a more complete picture of who I am.
What was more great to me however, was the fact that the book I chose is about cooking and food. I think I'm starting to see a trend and I'm getting hungry.
Every summer I would make the solo flight to Texas to visit my grandparents. Somewhere in the middle of summer (after the wildflowers died and the heat was officially unbearable) I would wake up in the early morning to the aroma of made-from-scratch-biscuits and the sound of a shotgun echoing through the country air. That combination only meant one thing: it was grape season. My grandparents lived on a large piece of country property in College Station, Texas. Along the fence line of the driveway was a series of mature grape vines that grew perfect jelly grapes, berries so dark they bridged on being black, they were juicy, abundant, and ready for picking.
Once I had finally rolled out of bed mid-morning, I would quickly scarf down Gran's amazing biscuits, get dressed, and head out to join Granddaddy at the grapevines (he was always up at 5:00am shooting the crows that liked the grapes as much as we did). Grad and I would venture out and after rounding the first bend of the driveway, see Granddaddy's beloved gray Toyota pick-up truck backed up into the heart of the vines. I would crawl up on the tailgate and armed with a bucket I would pick every grape I could reach (being a pretty short kid for my age for many of those years, that sometimes wasn't very much). Texas summers always had a point during the day where the heat reached a point of no return, and that was the signal to head in for lunch.
Usually within a couple days we (and by 'we' I mean Granddaddy starting at dawn and then reinforcements of Gran and me sometime mid-morning) had stripped the vines pretty clean. The morning following the final grape-picking expedition was the start to the grape's second life. It was time to make jelly.
Day one was spent weeding out any green or overripe grapes from the batch. We would cover the stove in large pots and would bring several pounds of grapes to a boil. The room would fill with the aroma of the grapes and I would stand and stir the pots listening to the grapes pop under the pressure of the heat and watching the solid round purple shapes slowly turn to a chunky liquid. After the grapes had boiled for their specified amount of time (I don't remember a lot of specifics mostly because as a little kid, specifics don't particularly matter) Gran and I would lay old white dish towels across large glass mixing bowls directly under a line of hooks Gran had across the kitchen under her top cabinets. Then we would quickly carry the steaming pots of grapes across the cool brick floor in a series of small hurried steps and dump the contents into the old subtle dish clothes. After returning the pots to the stove top, Gran would pull up the corners of the towel and knot it multiple times to ensure the knots would hold the weight of the grapes. The towels were then strung under the counter to sit overnight and drip. To my childhood level of patience, all I wanted to do was squeeze the bags to get the juice out sooner, but Gran always told me to leave it alone because squeezing the bags caused the jelly to have impurities. So I waited, and moved on to the second best activity of the day, eating Blue Bell ice cream.
Day two was when the real fun began. By that time the grapes had virtually stopped dripping and Gran would slowly take them down and dump out the grape seeds and pulp (as good as they smelled the day before straight off the stove, they smelled terrible now). As Gran measured out the specified amount of juice I was given the task of measuring sugar. Measurements being completed, the juice returned to the large pots joined by some fruit pectin to again come to a boil. The yummy aroma filled the room once more and in went the sugar. I then would stir the mixture until it felt like my arm was about to fall off. By that point Gran had prepared all the jars and we would scrape the impurities off the top of the mixture in the pot, fill each jar, screw on the lid, and flip it on its lid atop towels on the opposite side of the room. After five minutes, Gran and I would flip all the jars right-side up and let them sit and seal. Most of the process is a little bit of a blur, but the thing I remember most is waiting for the jars to pop. Just like jars in the grocery store, the jars we used had the center pop seal on them (if you're unsure what that is, just find a jar in your refrigerator and push down on the center of the lid and listen to it pop up and down) and after sitting on the counter awhile the top of the jar would pop up and seal. It was the last sign of success if all the jars sealed themselves.
Waiting for the jelly to completely cool, I would make labels to go on the front. They always had bunnies on them (Gran's favorite animal, it seemed fitting seeing as the house was full of them) and MGG's jelly (Maggie, Gran, and Granddaddy). Each one was labeled with the year, like a good vintage wine and drawn on fun colored sheets of copy-paper using a ball point pen, sharpie, and highlighters to make them look pretty.
Jelly making is work made fun. The final product was always sweet but changed slightly from year to year. Even now after the jelly and the house are gone, I can still taste the mouth-watering flavor of MGG jelly on Gran's perfectly amazing crumbly made-from-scratch-biscuits.
After revisiting the section on Family discourse I set out trying to conquer my assignment. I have stated before that I have the memory span of a goldfish, all of three seconds. As I was trying to remember things from my childhood, there wasn't a lot to draw from so I took Ulmer's 'office' advice and made a trip to my parent's house to look through old pictures in hopes of conjuring something up. The trip was rather futile because I soon realized there weren't any family pictures. There is no photography after I was a toddler, so all the images of the years I actually remember were never taken to document my childhood. There seems to be a huge void from the toddler years until I started taking my own pictures with/of my friends in middle school. After reading through the various assignments in section II, I settled on completing the assignment on page 86 by just telling the story because I couldn't document anything with my family pictures and it just doesn't feel right to document this using stock photography or my lame attempt at sketching. For my final site however, this story starts to really accentuate the motifs that constantly occur in my life. Cooking and baking in particular along with antique ideas and processes (jelly making, making food from scratch combined with motifs that show up in my career discourse)
For those of you that had class with me last semester, this story is all too familiar. I made a video about making apple butter...and what better way to eat apple butter then on fresh biscuits? This is where that idea originated, in my grandmother's kitchen as a child. I know Ulmer had mentioned using a Punctus memory from childhood, but I don't really have any. Everything I can remember is happy, and I have no qualms about that.
Since I did not have a chance to address the class about part I of the Mystory, let me fill in a few gaps here. I am posting all the components to my widesite on my blog so they have a digital presence. I want my site to be very consistent visually, so I am waiting until the final emblem emerges before I start trying to make a site that I eventually end up scrapping.
I have spent FOREVER trying to find clothes and dress myself. By now I'm just really frustrated and this is where I stopped. Why is it so difficult to find free clothes that aren't slutty? And why does it take forever to get clothes to semi-fit?!? (can you sense my frustration....)
Here is the old me: Here is the new/slightly improved...me:
Jan was right when he said Foucault was a difficult read. I spent the better part of this week huddled up in my office deciphering the pages. The only way I was really able to blog this week was to go through chapter by chapter and takes notes as I read along. Below is what I preened from the chapters. It is a little dirty, hard to understand, and lacking in the interpretation department, but it was all I could do to finish the prescribed reading with my brain still intact.
ch 1:
Foucault's thought that each statement that draws about history is really boiled down to the spirit that lays underneath...a punctus-like realization that causes the reader to draw connections from earlier work, although two different people may make two different references. Although the punctus association is always drawn from the past and is always unstated in the actual written work. 'a voice as silent as breath' never mind that he wants to destroy this way of thinking.
there are two ways of thinking according to Foucault: emotional and logical/physical. Logical is described in the before paragraph, physical is taking the document itself and only using the information listed...not inferring anything or making connections to any outside document but simply taking the document for what it states. Shallow and flat. It is simply scientific, like a research question that is just to be looked at quantitatively versus qualitatively.
ch. 2
Two problems develop: "the first...concerns the indiscriminate use that I have made of the terms statement, event, and discourse; the second concerns the relations that may legitimately be described between the statements that have been left in their provisional, visible grouping." (p 31)
Foucault makes 4 hypotheses to solve his problems, and each (for the record of frustration) he states, and then just as quickly disproves.
two statements relate if they refer to the same object (his example is madness which he quickly disproves by stating that madness doesn't always refer to the same topic throughout time)
Statements are written in the same style (example being of medicinal writing during the same time period using similar "vocabulary, same play of metaphor" (p 33) which is then disqualified because of the ever-growing list of qualifications of why something is written the way it is and again on the changes that occur throughout time).
Statements are aligned based on a "system of permanent and coherent concepts" aka: grammar. As quickly as this is explained it falls apart due to the changing face of grammar, you guessed it, through time.
This hypothesis is similar to number three, except the permanent concept is a "persistence of themes" (p35) (The example being economics). The fail is also similar to all the above mentioned ideas.
Did Foucault actually accomplish anything in this chapter except to end exactly where he began, with nothing? At least he is showing that he is trying new ideas even if he discovers by the end that they all suck. That's right people, I just said Foucault and suck in the same paragraph (I guess you could say I'm seeing if you're with me....and if you are, just leave a comment and I'll bring you a cookie).
So chapter one is spent disqualifying the established way of categorizing statements. By chapter two Foucault has moved on to establishing his own theories of how to categorize statements. He picks what he believes will be easy topics (medicine, economics, grammar) to discern and discovers after mass failure that this task may be harder than originally perceived and that the only thing he can conclude is that all the statements are tied together by their dis-similarities.
ch. 3
p 40-41 Foucault lays out and (a), (b) and (c) describing "rules of formation" using psychopathology as a chapter wide example.
(a) describes the "surfaces of emergence," basically stating that something can be grouped based on characteristics that are rejected from the understanding of the grouping (an example being a food is a fruit/vegetable because it does not come from an animal) I guess you could deem this guilty by disassociation/exclusion.
(b) "authorities of delimitation" that question who is the governing body or authority over said grouping.
(c) grids: how is the field typically divided?
imagine that, Foucault found this analysis "inadequate" (42) and again wonders, "why this, not that?" He begins to make several "remarks and consequences" (p 43):
an object cannot preexist itself. "It exists under the positive conitions of a complex group of relations." (p 45
It cannot be described based on some conceptual notion, strictly physical ones.
From what I can understand, Foucault wants to use only first person information (or as he states it "discursive relations") instead of sources that are writing about a topic they themselves have not experienced.
"Discursive relations are not, as we can see, internal to discourse" but nor are they external either.
As much as I struggled to understand chapter 2, I really could have just read the following on page 46, and it would have summed practically everything up:
Taking those group figures which, in an insistent but confused way, presented themselves as psychology, economics, grammar, medicine, we asked on what kind of unity they could be based: were they simply a reconstruction after the even, based on particular works, successive theories, notion and themes some of which had been abandoned, others maintained by tradition, and again others fated to fall into oblivion only to be revived at a later date? Were they simply a series of linked enterprises?
lame. Chapter 2 über simplified. (maybe I'm just bitter that I spend all that time wading through the chapter to see how much time I wasted..just saying)
ch. 4
Returning to the example of medicine, Foucault lists more questions pertaining to the validity of the statements and arrives at yet another list of questions:
"Who is speaking?"
Where is said person speaking? Foucault goes on to describe that different physical locations determine the importance of what is being stated, ie: what implications are known about a hospital versus a research facility (which he refers to as a library)
Foucault questions the "perceptual positioning" of the speaker.
All this leads to more questions, because these fail to single-handedly categorize the 19th century medical field.
ch. 5
I highlighted stuff, but to be honest I'm not even sure what I highlighted means. (insert frustration here) so I'm just going to move on.
ch. 6
more things to determine:
"Determine the possible points of diffraction of discourse." otherwise listed as another either/or senario. (p 65)
often the either/or that is included in the discourse is actually found outside the discourse itself. Enter the "economy of the discursive constellation." (p 66)
the ultimate determination of what is allowed (from the either/or) is determined by an outside authority.
ch. 7
The final chapter of section II is reflections of what he has found (again...I'm starting to feel like I'm reading a broken record) Can you tell that I'm slightly tired of this and that my brain is mush? Urgh. I'm off to go get something warm and calorie ridden. See y'all in class tonight.
