Before I get on with this, I ought to note a couple of things. First, I worked on my dissertation today, reading five articles and incorporating four of them into the section I am working on. Second, I am a casual fan of comic books generally and the Marvel universe specifically; I never got into collecting comics, but I do like to read them.
Ahem.
I watched the "motion comic" Astonishing X-Men: Gifted on Netflix today, and I must say that I was not impressed. Despite being written by Whedon, I found the dialogue a bit stilted and jerky. The voicing was not, in most cases, what it needed to be; Wolverine is not nearly surly (or Canadian) enough, for example, even if the stream of profanity he releases at one point is entirely in keeping with the character. The art, although pretty while still, is uncomfortably jerky in motion, looking like nothing so much as cardboard cutouts on popsicle sticks. And the unnecessary division into thirteen- or fourteen-minute "chapters" heightens the disjunction, interrupting the narrative uncomfortably and needlessly complicating what is an already...non-flowing presentation.
If it is a representative example of the "motion comic" genre, I want nothing to do with the whole damned thing.
I fully anticipate hate mail over this one. It has been a while since I've really gotten good examples of it, so please, fire away. Jerks.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Thursday, May 19, 2011
20110519.0826
On May 19, 2011, AP writer Calvin Woodward reported in "Feds Must Stop Writing Gibberish under New Law" that President Obama signed into law the Plain Writing Act. That act requires that "federal agencies must start writing plainly in all new or substantially revised documents produced for the public," although enforcement is limited.
The measure is, in effect, nothing more than a publicity stunt. In theory, "each agency must have a senior official overseeing plain writing." This will either mean that an already-existing official--one of the people putting out the "gibberish--will be promoted and tasked with being grammar police, or a number of new people will need to be hired to do the oversight--amidst clamors for reduced governmental spending.
Who would be qualified as "expert" in the area? Journalists? English professors? Businesspeople?
What, really, is "plain English?" Whose English? And who actually speaks or writes it fully?
The measure is, in effect, nothing more than a publicity stunt. In theory, "each agency must have a senior official overseeing plain writing." This will either mean that an already-existing official--one of the people putting out the "gibberish--will be promoted and tasked with being grammar police, or a number of new people will need to be hired to do the oversight--amidst clamors for reduced governmental spending.
Who would be qualified as "expert" in the area? Journalists? English professors? Businesspeople?
What, really, is "plain English?" Whose English? And who actually speaks or writes it fully?
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
20110517.1536
I returned to New York City from Kalamazoo, Michigan, yesterday. I was in Kalamazoo to attend and present a paper at the 46th International Congress on Medieval Studies. As was the case last year, I found the conference illuminating, and I am quite glad for having gone, although I am certainly glad to be back home.
This year, I lodged in the dormitories at Western Michigan University, the site of the Congress. The convenience of living on site was quite nice. The lack of air conditioning was less so, particularly for the first couple of days of the conference. Temperatures in the high 80s and humidity higher than that, along with a lack of ventilation, made for stifling times. I have the impression, though, that there is method to the madness of that setup; the classrooms are air conditioned, so students are induced to get out of their rooms and use the school's facilities. It is a clever tactic.
The first day of the conference, Wednesday, boasted a couple of events that piqued my interest some time ago. The first was a particularly tasty buffet, which I had paid to attend. The menu included quite a selection of fine neo-medieval food; I ate heartily and enjoyed the company of a few of my professional colleagues.
Following dinner, I attended a performance of Spamalot. I am not normally a fan of musical productions, but I am quite fond of Monty Python, so it made sense for me to go. My attendance--an action also taken by a number of the conference attendees--set a pleasant tone for the conference.
The next day, Thursday, saw me attend several sessions after opening up the exhibit hall and spending a fair amount of money buying books as well as picking up catalogs from publishers and a few bits of information from other vendors. The panels I attended focused on the idea of the neo-medieval, which is the interpretation (and, not infrequently, misinterpretation) of the medieval in the current. Difficulties in the digital medieval were discussed at great length, as was the fact that the medievals themselves did the kinds of things that current neo-medievalists do; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was advanced as one example of the phenomenon at work. Also discussed was the use of the neo-medieval as a way to drive enrollment in medieval studies courses and thereby potentially protect them against administrators who see medieval coursework as expendable.
My own panel, the Rhetoric of Knighthood, followed. As it turns out, I was the seniormost member of my panel, both in terms of age and of status in the field; my two fellow panelists were both master's students, and the presider had only recently earned her MA. I found myself therefore in something of a mentoring position, which was unexpected but not unpleasant, and my presentation, "Knighthood Continued: The Endurance of the Chivalric in Early Stuart England" (which derives from a part of my dissertation), went over well.
Friday was a busy day. I attended most of the Spenser at Kalamazoo events, including two panels and a dinner. I bowed out of the afternoon session to take a nap; I had not gotten much sleep the previous two nights, and it told upon me. Even so, I was able to enjoy prolonged discussions with the Spenserians at the Congress, to whom I had been introduced last year by my dissertation director, who is among their number. I was also invited to attend the meeting of the International Sidney Society, where we had an open discussion of several coronas* written by Sidney and his associates; a fine time was had by all.
On Saturday, I attended a Sidney panel in the morning, finding it quite interesting. That afternoon, I attended a panel put on by the International Arthurian Society/ North American Branch, finding it informative and entertaining. Then came dinner with the Sidney folks, followed by a couple of social events that allowed Sunday to be a relatively dead day for me; the conference ended, and I went to see a movie in the afternoon.
As I noted, the experience was quite enjoyable. I made a number of professional contacts and was able to glean a fair bit of knowledge from outside my field of focus. Unlike last year, I was not able to directly parlay any of the material into my dissertation, but I think I ended up having a better time.
I look forward to next year.
*A corona in this sense is a cycle of poems in which the last line of one poem becomes the first line of the next. The last line of the last poem is the same as the first line of the first poem. The cycle therefore forms a sort of circle or crown, hence the name.
This year, I lodged in the dormitories at Western Michigan University, the site of the Congress. The convenience of living on site was quite nice. The lack of air conditioning was less so, particularly for the first couple of days of the conference. Temperatures in the high 80s and humidity higher than that, along with a lack of ventilation, made for stifling times. I have the impression, though, that there is method to the madness of that setup; the classrooms are air conditioned, so students are induced to get out of their rooms and use the school's facilities. It is a clever tactic.
The first day of the conference, Wednesday, boasted a couple of events that piqued my interest some time ago. The first was a particularly tasty buffet, which I had paid to attend. The menu included quite a selection of fine neo-medieval food; I ate heartily and enjoyed the company of a few of my professional colleagues.
Following dinner, I attended a performance of Spamalot. I am not normally a fan of musical productions, but I am quite fond of Monty Python, so it made sense for me to go. My attendance--an action also taken by a number of the conference attendees--set a pleasant tone for the conference.
The next day, Thursday, saw me attend several sessions after opening up the exhibit hall and spending a fair amount of money buying books as well as picking up catalogs from publishers and a few bits of information from other vendors. The panels I attended focused on the idea of the neo-medieval, which is the interpretation (and, not infrequently, misinterpretation) of the medieval in the current. Difficulties in the digital medieval were discussed at great length, as was the fact that the medievals themselves did the kinds of things that current neo-medievalists do; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was advanced as one example of the phenomenon at work. Also discussed was the use of the neo-medieval as a way to drive enrollment in medieval studies courses and thereby potentially protect them against administrators who see medieval coursework as expendable.
My own panel, the Rhetoric of Knighthood, followed. As it turns out, I was the seniormost member of my panel, both in terms of age and of status in the field; my two fellow panelists were both master's students, and the presider had only recently earned her MA. I found myself therefore in something of a mentoring position, which was unexpected but not unpleasant, and my presentation, "Knighthood Continued: The Endurance of the Chivalric in Early Stuart England" (which derives from a part of my dissertation), went over well.
Friday was a busy day. I attended most of the Spenser at Kalamazoo events, including two panels and a dinner. I bowed out of the afternoon session to take a nap; I had not gotten much sleep the previous two nights, and it told upon me. Even so, I was able to enjoy prolonged discussions with the Spenserians at the Congress, to whom I had been introduced last year by my dissertation director, who is among their number. I was also invited to attend the meeting of the International Sidney Society, where we had an open discussion of several coronas* written by Sidney and his associates; a fine time was had by all.
On Saturday, I attended a Sidney panel in the morning, finding it quite interesting. That afternoon, I attended a panel put on by the International Arthurian Society/ North American Branch, finding it informative and entertaining. Then came dinner with the Sidney folks, followed by a couple of social events that allowed Sunday to be a relatively dead day for me; the conference ended, and I went to see a movie in the afternoon.
As I noted, the experience was quite enjoyable. I made a number of professional contacts and was able to glean a fair bit of knowledge from outside my field of focus. Unlike last year, I was not able to directly parlay any of the material into my dissertation, but I think I ended up having a better time.
I look forward to next year.
*A corona in this sense is a cycle of poems in which the last line of one poem becomes the first line of the next. The last line of the last poem is the same as the first line of the first poem. The cycle therefore forms a sort of circle or crown, hence the name.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
20110510.0850
"Twenty-nine" years ago today, on a Mothers' Day Sunday, my own mother was born. That many years later, with me two years in Brooklyn, I wish her another happy birthday and have high hopes for many more.
Love the Momma.
Love the Momma.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
20110508.1212
...Huh?...
...Dissertating...'zat a word?...
...Oh, yeah. Happy Mothers' Day!...
...articles...
...Dissertating...'zat a word?...
...Oh, yeah. Happy Mothers' Day!...
...articles...
Thursday, May 5, 2011
20110505.0922
So, just over a year after I began...
Once again, happy Cinco de Mayo!
Also, and more importantly, congratulations to my brother, who will be graduating from the University of Texas at San Antonio today.
Once again, happy Cinco de Mayo!
Also, and more importantly, congratulations to my brother, who will be graduating from the University of Texas at San Antonio today.
Monday, April 25, 2011
20110425.0815
On April 23, 2011, Charles McGrath's "Why the King James Bible Endures" appeared in the online New York Times. In the article, McGrath argues that a major cause of the text's endurance is specifically in its removal from everyday language. He comments that the language chosen by the fifty-four member group that initially produced it chose wording that was deliberately archaic--though accessible to the readership of the time--so that even on its first printing, the text would have been different from the presumed common speech of the readership. McGrath also voices annoyance at the tendency of more recent English transliterations of the Bible to assume a conversational tone, commenting that "Not everyone prefers a God who talks like a pal or a guidance counselor." The article effectively articulates and provides support for one view of why the KJV endures, although more could be done to support its assertions and there is certainly room for debate.
In my readings yesterday, I was glad to see the article. It gives voice to a position similar to one I have held for some time (and yes, I know that I sound like I'm saying "Me, too!"). That position arose at the church my wife and I attend. I am quite fond of my fellow congregants and of our clergy, but I do not agree with all of the choices they make. For example, I abhor the use of The Message. It purports to be a rendition of the canonical Biblical texts in current English, but every time I look at the text, I am struck by its insipidness.
I well understand the desire for inclusivity, and I am aware of the arguments against the phallogocentric patriarchal gender-norming that is evidenced in referring to the Almighty as "Our Father." And I understand that a desire exists to get people away form rote recitation in pursuit of deeper engagement with a text. I do not disagree with them, and I do not disagree that corrective measures need be taken. But I do disagree that in seeking to approach the divine we ought to treat it as though it is no greater than we and is not special--which such pallid--and, frankly, intellectually insulting--language as is found in The Message represents.
While I do subscribe to the idea that, as a man of faith, I ought to seek to involve the Almighty in all my doings, I do not presume to speak to God as though the Most High is my peer. The Wielder is most certainly not my peer, and it is more arrogant than even I am willing to be to act as though the Shaper were. It trivializes the relationship I have with the Measurer to have Scripture not so much made contemporary as made the same as chatting with someone in an elevator.
I suppose that the point is that I view my relationship with the Almighty as a special thing, and that special things deserve special treatment. I know that there is in the United States a prevailing attitude that seeks to break down the kind of differentiation I enjoy (see McWhorter, Doing Our Own Thing), and I know that I am of an older mode in my treatment of it. That is to be expected, I think, given what I do for a living; that I am a student of older literatures is no secret, and shows up in my references to God in the preceding paragraph.
Even so, I do not know that simplest is best. After all, Jesus himself taught in parables.
In my readings yesterday, I was glad to see the article. It gives voice to a position similar to one I have held for some time (and yes, I know that I sound like I'm saying "Me, too!"). That position arose at the church my wife and I attend. I am quite fond of my fellow congregants and of our clergy, but I do not agree with all of the choices they make. For example, I abhor the use of The Message. It purports to be a rendition of the canonical Biblical texts in current English, but every time I look at the text, I am struck by its insipidness.
I well understand the desire for inclusivity, and I am aware of the arguments against the phallogocentric patriarchal gender-norming that is evidenced in referring to the Almighty as "Our Father." And I understand that a desire exists to get people away form rote recitation in pursuit of deeper engagement with a text. I do not disagree with them, and I do not disagree that corrective measures need be taken. But I do disagree that in seeking to approach the divine we ought to treat it as though it is no greater than we and is not special--which such pallid--and, frankly, intellectually insulting--language as is found in The Message represents.
While I do subscribe to the idea that, as a man of faith, I ought to seek to involve the Almighty in all my doings, I do not presume to speak to God as though the Most High is my peer. The Wielder is most certainly not my peer, and it is more arrogant than even I am willing to be to act as though the Shaper were. It trivializes the relationship I have with the Measurer to have Scripture not so much made contemporary as made the same as chatting with someone in an elevator.
I suppose that the point is that I view my relationship with the Almighty as a special thing, and that special things deserve special treatment. I know that there is in the United States a prevailing attitude that seeks to break down the kind of differentiation I enjoy (see McWhorter, Doing Our Own Thing), and I know that I am of an older mode in my treatment of it. That is to be expected, I think, given what I do for a living; that I am a student of older literatures is no secret, and shows up in my references to God in the preceding paragraph.
Even so, I do not know that simplest is best. After all, Jesus himself taught in parables.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Saturday, April 23, 2011
20110423.1720
I have a few times mentioned that there are stories that inform blog posts I have made. Referring to stories that are not themselves under discussion is a time-honored tradition in writing. Tolkien does it in The Lord of the Rings, noting in Sam's pudgy hobbit mouth the tale of Beren Erchamion or having a comment come out of Aragorn's about the "cheek to make verses about Eärendil in the house of Elrond" or some such thing.¹ Milton does it all over the place in Paradise Lost, opening the poem with a lot of stuff about Mount Sinai and an Aonian mountain. Malory talks about "the French book."² Even Beowulf mentions other stories within its own story, some of them not told directly but strongly, strongly hinted at.
Those who will see a disjunction among Tolkien and the other authors and works listed--though they are all dead English white guys--will be pleased to know that I have a reason for including him. That is, I have a reason other than that I am a nerd who likes to read "that fantasy crap" for including him. You see, in "On Fairy-stories," Tolkien makes the comment that references to stories understood as common cultural referents by the characters involved in a given story increase the correspondence of the literary world with the directly observable world in which the reader exists.³ The closer that correspondence, the more believable the literary world, and the easier therefore the immersion in the story that is necessary for literary enjoyment.
There is some of that going on in what I write in this blog. As is necessarily the case with writing, the voice or persona that presents these words is a fiction. It is not me, even though it is me; really, it is a particular view of me that I want you to see. This does, of course, make it total bullshit (ask Harry G. Frankfurt in his On Bullshit). The references, then, are ways to further the perception of the persona; they make it look like my blogging persona has some kind of family life and experience, even though it really is something that I just come up with as I sit in front of one computer or another with more time than sense.
But there is also something else going on. The communicative act is one which creates an ephemeral community; that is, the community only exists in the moment during which the communicative act occurs. It is a commonplace that communities are concerned in part with defining themselves, and that one way a community defines itself is by articulating what it is not. By making references to other events, I tacitly delineate what the community is not: those who do not understand the references are left outside of the community. They are denied the full meaning of the posts, and thereby are not completely included in the communicative act.
This is, of course, because I do not like them, as they are jerks.
Notes
1. As this is not a formal essay, I am not going to bother pulling up the specific page number. So there.*
2. He does so in late Middle English, which I do not reproduce here.
3. Provided, of course, that a reader exists. This is not always the case, however.
*It's Fellowship of the Ring, page 285.
Those who will see a disjunction among Tolkien and the other authors and works listed--though they are all dead English white guys--will be pleased to know that I have a reason for including him. That is, I have a reason other than that I am a nerd who likes to read "that fantasy crap" for including him. You see, in "On Fairy-stories," Tolkien makes the comment that references to stories understood as common cultural referents by the characters involved in a given story increase the correspondence of the literary world with the directly observable world in which the reader exists.³ The closer that correspondence, the more believable the literary world, and the easier therefore the immersion in the story that is necessary for literary enjoyment.
There is some of that going on in what I write in this blog. As is necessarily the case with writing, the voice or persona that presents these words is a fiction. It is not me, even though it is me; really, it is a particular view of me that I want you to see. This does, of course, make it total bullshit (ask Harry G. Frankfurt in his On Bullshit). The references, then, are ways to further the perception of the persona; they make it look like my blogging persona has some kind of family life and experience, even though it really is something that I just come up with as I sit in front of one computer or another with more time than sense.
But there is also something else going on. The communicative act is one which creates an ephemeral community; that is, the community only exists in the moment during which the communicative act occurs. It is a commonplace that communities are concerned in part with defining themselves, and that one way a community defines itself is by articulating what it is not. By making references to other events, I tacitly delineate what the community is not: those who do not understand the references are left outside of the community. They are denied the full meaning of the posts, and thereby are not completely included in the communicative act.
This is, of course, because I do not like them, as they are jerks.
Notes
1. As this is not a formal essay, I am not going to bother pulling up the specific page number. So there.*
2. He does so in late Middle English, which I do not reproduce here.
3. Provided, of course, that a reader exists. This is not always the case, however.
*It's Fellowship of the Ring, page 285.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
20110419.1915
Due to some shenanigans involving evidently wrongful termination of one of my colleagues, I am renaming my boss Scott Summers. Many of my other coworkers are hoping that he finds some ruby-quartz and has it stapled to his head.
No, I am not going to explain.
No, I am not going to explain.
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