Goodbye Blog

This blog started with a poem, and so I shall close it with one.

Goodbye Blog
by Me

Goodbye blog.

Goodbye, blog.

Goodbye, Dr. Woodworth, watching over the blog.

Goodbye students, I’ve known since the fall.
Goodbye spring students, each one and all.

Goodbye partner class at OCU.
You guys were awesome, it really is true.

Goodbye crazy ex-boyfriend, who stalked one of our class.
We all think you’re crazy, and kind of an [redacted].

Goodbye Carla, our Spring-Term ghost.
Would you have stayed, were we better hosts?

Goodbye Piano Black WordPress theme.
Goodbye monacled Keanu Reeves meme.

Goodbye to the shopping carts we all filled with blue.
And truly, dear reader, goodbye to you.

I don’t blog. It’s not that have anything against blogging, but it’s just not something I’m liable to continue doing. If I need a blog for a class at some point down the line, it’s good to know I already have one set up and ready to go. It’s been fun though. It really has. This is the absolutely last thing I’m doing to close out my semester. It’s 3 a.m., and I’m exhausted and the exam results are rolling in and it’s all wrapping up nicely.

Tomorrow will be a new adventure.

Peace.

Our Final

In class, we folded paper cranes. Why?

In Japan, a person who folds 1,000 paper cranes before they die is supposedly granted a wish. After the World War II atomic bombings of Japan, a young Japanese girl, Sadako, developed cancer in the wake of the radiation. Her quest became to fold 1,000 cranes to that she could live. She unfortunately passed away before she could complete her goal. Her friends and family finished them for her, and Sadako’s story is immortalized in the book Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes.

This symbol of hope, the paper crane, was taken up by the people of Oklahoma in the wake of the bombing. A whole section of the museum is dedicated to paper cranes and the hope they symbolize, and cranes that are sent to the museum are kept in the museum’s archives.

The cranes we made in class will be sent to Oklahoma to be kept there, passing on what hope we can give to those who have needed it more.

My crane:

Thank You Professor Nobles!

I would like to thank you personally for the opportunity to experience the last academic year. My English composition experience was unlike any other. It was a truly unique learning experience outside of the basic textbook progression and every day brought new and unusual challenges to stretch our thinking and the way we see the world. Being able to learn in an unusual way and also to partner with and visit the OCU class has been amazing and I feel truly fortunate for getting to be a part of it. Thank you so very much.

Thank You Dr. Hessler and Class!

Thank you so much for the opportunity to come and visit your wonderful city. The people were lovely, the atmosphere was lovely, it was just a grand time all-around. It was a breath of fresh air. Everyone there seemed so enthusiastic.

I regret to inform you that, should I become some kind of super-villain that is still somehow unable to leave Montgomery, I will be stealing parts of your city away from you for myself because the whole place was absolutely smashing.

It’s been wonderful to cross-pollinate our brains with your guys. Have a terrific summer!

My line

The line I picked from my “I Am From” post:

From couch cushion forts

My OCU Map Gift

The map I received during my recent trip to OCU was the Hall of Aces map from Pictures We Speak. It looks a little something, or rather, exactly like, this:

This picture ripped from PituresWeSpeak's blog in accordance with all that stuff we learned on copyright. Or maybe in spite of it.

It’s a map of only a small part of the OCU campus, specifically the school of theatre. The map is three pages bound together with string. The actual map is on the second page. It doesn’t list actual room or hall numbers, but rather the offices of the instructors are denoted by nicknames that give more of an impression of what the person might be like beyond what a simple name would. If I were looking for vocal help, for instance, rather than wander the halls aimlessly going from one office to the next I would simply go to the room marked “Vocal Paragon.” A map like this I would imagine could be very useful to the theatre student who’s just starting out. So while it’s less directly representative of the physical location, it goes a bit deeper than that simply data would have.

But then, I’m not a theatre student, which brings me to my next point. The security on this map is terrible. To open the map I must solemnly swear that I am in the OCU school of theatre, which I’m not either physically present or enrolled in. In this way, the tables have turned and it is I who am lying to the map! Fooled you, map! Had I been an assassin sent from a competing theatre school I would now have enough information to take out the Shakespeare Guru while also being able to avoid the Master Swordsman.

We can only hope and pray that some day this map doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.

OC

Oklahoma City wore me out. I enjoyed it though. One thing the city had that I’ve missed so much was wind. Oh, how it was lovely to feel the wind again.

We traded our maps with the other class’s students. I was right next to Sam, a bubbling fountain of energy with a map so big you could literally sleep on it. It was also a yoga mat so it would even be comfortable to do so. They brought us cookies and puppy chow in an apparent attempt to kill us with sugar, but our Alabama guts are so fortified with sweet tea I doubt they even noticed. There were an awful lot of them, but I guess I’m just used to having a tiny English class. The maps they map to represent their city or small parts of their city were highly varied. No two were even remotely alike. Some were small enough to slip inside a textbook, and one (Sam’s map) was large enough that it had to be a carry-on item on the plane ride home because it wouldn’t fit in anything.

The campus itself was lovely. The cafeteria was so impressively wonderful that it inspired talk of starting a rebellion here at home. Those thoughts will stay with us until we rise up and claim either our own waffle bar or death. I didn’t see as many squirrels as I do at AUM. I do love squirrels so. I saw one try to climb a window the other day. The glass was smooth, like glass is wont to be, and the thing just fell back onto the grass. It tried seven more times. Anyway…

I got a sense that they all had more state pride than Alabama does. After talking about it with the other students we decided it was because Alabama is a state of division. Not just the Civil Rights stuff dividing us by race, though that’s still going on. But also by religion. Even between churches of the same denomination. Then football. You’re either an Alabama fan or an Auburn fan and the one you pick, which you must even if you haven’t the slightest interest in football, practically determines your friends for you. Or politics, which I won’t go further into.

I noticed that our server at the Kaiser had a tattoo of Oklahoma state on her wrist, and that, I don’t think, would happen here. An Alabama or Auburn tattoo, sure. I’m trying to think if I’ve actually seen that before, which I’m sure I have but no clear memory comes to mind. Alabama is very much a state of division. It very ‘us against them’ and there is no middle ground. Everyone who isn’t in your camp is your enemy, always.

For my part, I’m an Auburn fan. Why? Because I worked in a drive-through here for four years and the Alabama fans consistently came across as less intelligent than the Auburn fans, and they were usually jerks as well. If someone came through and was a complete ass, there was a good chance you’d see the Alabama ‘A’ somewhere in or on their vehicle.

So in part the trip served as a time to reflect on my own state. I don’t know if the impression of unity I was getting was accurate because I was only there for two days, but it was still enough to get me thinking.

Anyway, Oklahoma City itself was also delightful. The red brick buildings of the district we were next to gave me a warm and cozy feeling. And the food was amazing. Everywhere we went the food was amazing. If I could have brought home one thing with me, it’d have been the Red Cup. My biggest regret of all the things I wished I could do but didn’t get the chance to was trying their breakfast burrito. Someday, I will have to return. And then I will eat myself to death and love every minute of it.

Spring Break

I went down a road with the best intentions to accomplish things and ended up in the hell of not accomplishing those things.

I finally had internet service turned on in my house for the first time in five-ish years now, and once it was up it ate all my time.

My mental spring break, as a result, looked something like this:

Which contrasts with what that actually looks like in person, which is more:

My Sring Break is best summarized by a quote from the movie Office Space:
“Michael, I did nothing. I did absolutely nothing, and it was everything that I thought it could be.”

And it really was. I relax and recharge the best in a vegetative state.

And that’s about it. It really is. And now I’m just writing to fill up the time cause everyone else is still writing and I don’t wanna seem lazy by comparison. You can stop reading now. The post is already done, if under 200 words. I mean, I suppose I could talk about how Wikipedia is like a mental maze an unwary mind can get lost in for hours, but then I’d probably just go off and read Wikipedia. I played through the Portal 2 co-op with my roommate, but listening to someone talk about a past video game experience is kinda like listening to someone talk about all the time they spent surfing the internet or listening to someone’s dreams.

Speaking of which, I had a dream during spring break that I was a duck fighter pilot that lived in an egg-shaped floating citadel in the sky, and there were evil black-feathered ducks that lived in another floating egg-shaped citadel that they kept floating in storms to hide it from the good ducks. I was tasked with infiltrating the evil floating duck-egg fortress. I wonder what that means. Break that one down, dream interpreters! Lets see what you’ve got!

So, that’s all. I’m done now.

Peace.

E to the P to the L

Ethos. Pathos. Logos. The three pillars of the rhetorical argument, one of the most ancient ideas we’ll be exposed to during our schooling, rivaled in ancientness only by other Greek ideas. Greeks have all the best ancient ideas it seems.

So what are these three pillars, and how are they used to construct arguments and convey ideas?

First, Ethos.

Ethos is the credibility and character of the speaker conveying the idea. No matter how convincing your message may be, how solid the logic or science behind it is, or how passionate you feel about what you’re saying, if you’re coming across as a total snooker-loopy crackpot then no one is going to take you seriously.

Pictured: Not Ethos

Ethos strikes me as one of those things that you either have or you don’t. Either you’re a credible source for what you’re saying, or you’re not and that perception is going to cling about you. And nowadays what with the internets and googles of the world your credibility is easily challenged. If you don’t have it, it’s going to become readily apparent to anyone who bothers to fact-check you or look up other, less than credible opinions you may have posted on Facebook.

I just heard of this new band called "The Doors." You heard them yet?

This is also affected by one’s reputation. It’s easier to be considered credible if you happen to be a leading expert in your field. Less so if you aren’t. I knew a girl who had a bachelor’s degree in psychology and felt that that empowered her to analyze everyone around her. It’s pretty common knowledge though, that you’re not considered to be learned enough to actually practice psychology until you’ve taken the time and effort to get a doctoral degree. Needless to say, she lost her credibility among that particular peer group pretty quickly.

Even if some of what she was saying may have been correct, her lack or credibility deeply affected the view of what she was saying. As a result it became harder for people to take her seriously in other subjects as well.

Pathos.

Pathos is the listener’s emotion and how well the speaker manages to engage them. This can be a tricky part to manage. Even if your argument is backed by one’s own credibility and has a logical grounding it’s still possible to lose your listeners by mismanaging their emotional response.

This s where knowing your listeners really comes into importance. If you know their values and beliefs and culture, then it will be far easier to tailor your message to evoke the emotional response you’re looking for than if you didn’t. To connect to your listeners you have to know them and know what they’ll respond to.

This is easily seen in our politics. The Republicans appeal to the values of their constituents, which are very different than the values of people who consider themselves Democrats. The values held by both groups are different and the similar emotional responses both audiences can give are linked to vastly differing ideas.

Another great example of using Pathos is that I know some of my target audience well enough to know that one simple move will totally endear the people reading this to me forever. Behold:

Concentrated Pathos ... Aww, who's a kitty?

Logos.

Pure cold-brewed logic

Logos is my favorite of the three pillars. It’s the one that gets to me the easiest, and that without I’ll discount what you’re saying to be the easiest.

Logos in a nutshell: Does it make sense?

And that’s really it. If what you’re telling me has no grounding in reality, I’m not going to listen to you. And that’s regardless of how hard you try to play to my emotions. Try being cornered by an anti-government 9/11 conspiracy theorist who’s insistent that the South is going to rise again and you’ll know how crippling a lack of Logos can be to an argument.

To me, especially in the modern age where knowledge flows like a rushing river, this is the most important pillar. This isn’t the Middle Ages or Ancient Greece. The average citizen is knowledgeable, literate, and informed. The average person in our country today, even the dumb ones, are stuffed to the brim with information that would make them scholars and philosophers in the ancient world. The more information that flows around and that we, as a whole, absorb, the most you’re going to have to have an argument that’s grounded in reality for someone to listen to you.

Remembering Me

How do I want to be remembered after the semester is over?

From a realistic standpoint if I end up being remembered as the wanker in the front row who could barely be bothered to do his assignments on time and contributed little other than off-topic remarks then, well, I guess that’s accurate if nothing else. But this isn’t a post about accuracy. It’s about how I want to be remembered.

Like this, only BRONZER.

I’d like to be remembered as tall and intimidating, strong and fierce, grey like a raging storm. Also, with a jaunty eye patch, a beard full of wisdom, and a a spear forged by the Sons of Ivaldi beneath the crust of the world. I want to be remembered for the scars left by my time hanging on Yggdrasil and the straight-pimpin’ eight-legged horse I rode up to campus on every day.

Basically, when someone asks if you know Shoe, you should respond with “Oh, you mean Odin, All-Father and god of the hanged?” Though that may change. It’s hard to pick which Norse god I feel like being remembered as.

It's just how I roll. Don't be hatin'.

I would hope though, that anyone who actually cared enough to want to remember me as is would simply add me to Facebook. We no longer need to live in a world where the end of a semester signals the last communications we have with each other. We can break the cycle. We can be free.