Planning and Planning

So I started getting together all the information I need to plan a trip to Disney for our Senior Trip. All I really know, is there may or may not be four of us, but there will at least be three of us. We want to stay on Disney grounds for at least a week, and that Aaron wants to go to Universal for at least a day.

Now, Disney is expensive enough, but when you factor in a hotel stay before and possibly after, plus 100 dollars for tickets into Universal to see both parks, meals for a week, and gas money. . .well, you get the picture.

I really want to do this with Aaron and Matt, and possibly, Lauren, but Matt and Lauren don't want to spend a lot of money. . .like more than like 5-6 hundred dollars. . . UGH. . .this is hard. . .I want to plan a good, fun vacation, but such strict boundries makes it really hard.

I hope I can do this.

JA NE!

How do you cope?

Days like this, I wonder why I bother. It's not that I got held a half hour extra at work. It's not that I have to work 8 hours on Saturday afternoon, even though I told my boss that I couldn't work Saturday afternoons and that I would rather work mornings. I meet with my therapist on Saturday afternoons, since the rest of the week he's in Shreveport on an internship for what maybe our future. I don't even know what I want with my life anymore. . .But I'll get into that later.

Mostly, it's because, not only are those two things happening, but also, I feel like total crap with a head ache, and a stomach ache, and I've been sniffling and coughing for like 3 days. When I was finally able to leave from HELL, I mean, McDonald's. . .I felt like I was going to puke, or pass out. . .Or something along those lines. . .But I was going home, so that was fine. The VCR didn't want to work, while I attempted to balance a plate of nasty cold macaroni and a baked potato in my lap so when I reached for the other remote, there went supper. Stomach ache not going away anytime soon as I starve until breakfast tomorrow. Then I work 7 hours tomorrow. . .Off Friday. . .And 8 hours on Saturday. . .Why couldn't I have 8 hours on Friday and ZERO on Saturday. . .Instead of getting off at 10 on Saturday (yea, like that's gonna happen. . .Probably be more like 11) then drive home and go straight to bed cause I have to be back up and out the door for 7:30 to be at work for 8. How in the HELL am I supposed to be cheery with all the elderly people and the morons that come in on Sunday mornings on like no sleep. I'm not cheery with no sleep. . .I'm more like Annie. Delirious and hating people. My highlights were looking cute going to the bowling alley, talking to Aaron and Attack of the Show. They are awesome. .. WATCH IT on G4 at 6 Central and 11 Central. Or you can check them out online and see everything from the site. They even play "Happy Tree Friends" on Monday and Friday. Today, they blinged out phones and an X-Box. Kevin and Sarah are f'in awesome. You can even get clothes like them at JINX. I want the shirt that says, "You are so off My Buddy List."

So yea. . .The future. . .Well, who knows. . . I don't even know what I want to do really cause everytime I think I do, something falls apart, or something else becomes a major obstacle for it that is mostly impassable in this retarded little town or with the people I'm with or my parents. I'll never get anything I want staying here unless I can do it over the internet. Maybe I'll loose weight by the time I go back to school, and I'll feel better . . . And maybe I'll be happy for a while. I want to be happy, but sometimes I feel as if I'm one of those people who weren't meant for happiness...It's so fleeting when it comes and not nearly often enough to be called more than not. I thought I was supposed to be the optimist. . . .Maybe that's all an act too. I should have been in theater. Problem is my act is real life and no one knows or can even really tell. I want someone I can be real with and they won't get upset or ask me what the hell is wrong that I'm not being myself.


SLEEP, like DEATH, chases us all and one by one, at some point in time, we call succumb.

Good night.

Just trudging through life. . .

I supposed I should post more, but lately, I don't feel like it. . . I'm still reading a lot, but I just don't feel like writing anything. Maybe I should start doing those writing excercises again where I make myself write for at least 30 minutes a day. . .I know I could make time to do it, but I just don't feel like doing that either. I played Fuel's Bad Day for a while tonight. . .that song kinda makes me depressed, but I like it, so I play it anyway and feel rather indifferent to everything. I've started diligent work on a scrapbook for Aaron and myself. I've got three pages done and several ideas, but I have no crafting glue since Elmer's makes the paper bubble, so they're just laid out and not really finished.

Adam made the All-Star team in baseball and he got first place in Singles and him and Luke got first in Doubles at City Tournament. The scores were in the paper last Saturday. He has a game tomorrow, and I think another on Wednesday, but I can't go to that one.

I still haven't found a job for the summer yet. . .I've put in several apps, but no takers. . .I have one I have to fill out for Dillards as soon as I get off tonight. They're looking for two people.

Maybe after I get up and clean the house a bit tomorrow I'll feel better. Maybe.

=*.*= Weyrd Kat

Summer has arrived. . .

So Summer has started and like you, I'm hard at work trying to find that elusive summer job. . .I don't really care what it is. . .just work. No experience is a major issue. . .

Anyway, I went see 3 Doors Down on Wednesday, and they totally kicked ass. There was a mystery band called "Top of the Orange" that performed a half hour set, and they were awesome! Click the link up top and check them out! SilverTide sucked. . .who's that guy think he is? Keith Richards? It's not cool to dress like an 80's rocker. . .his band consisted of a nerd, a Chilli Pepper's wannabe, and two Monkees. . . come on. . .in rock, it's 1/3 music, 1/3 looks, and 1/3 presence. . .and he was 3/3 horrible. Breaking Benjamin on the other hand. . .that's a great presence. . .I wasn't too big into them after listening to the cd, but their performance was hot. After that, the guys from TOTO came out and I got autographs from the lead singer, Jeff Beritiech, and lead guitarist, Brandyn Ulmer. . .they're really down to Earth fun guys.

Then 3 Doors Down took the stage. . .Oh my! What an awesome show! I sang along and bounced around and had a great time. The lead singer, Brad Arnold is from Mississippi, and he was on 106.7 before the show, and I never really thought about him having that Miss. accent, but the minute he started talking on the radio it came out STRONG. It wasn't too bad during the show, however. Here's the rest of the band: Matt Roberts (guitar), Chris Henderson (guitar), Todd Harrell (bass), and Greg Upchurch (drummer) all from Escatawpa, Mississippi. You can check them out at their website or any cd store. Their new album, Seventeen Days is awesome too.

Anyway, that's it from me for now! Take care!

Journal 6 for C&C - Romantic Tech

Sorry I didn't do Journal 5. :(

My tech project is looking to be an extension of some of my research for my undergraduate thesis. So far, I want to look at what the romance novel actually is as compared to what popular culture defines it as and why it is not accepted in more academic circles for the work that goes into making it a piece of fiction. I know that a lot of critics call Romance novels ‘porn in words’ and that it is really just ‘sappy, annoying crap’ but there is a lot more that goes into a novel of the genre than just two characters having sex or confessing their love for one another. Historical novels must be accurate, or have a really good reason why something is portrayed in a not historically accurate way (which is most often frowned upon.) This topic is important to English literature because it is a large field of writers (one which I want to join) that aren’t getting their (although mostly, but not always her) proper credit for all the work that goes into a novel simply because it isn’t part of the ‘dead white guy’ canon. Romantic literature includes drama and poetry too, yet we accept William Blake and Shakespeare. Shakespeare wrote about emotions and romance. However, these were male writers, almost in the same way that Richards is accepted as canonical for his ‘romance’ Pamela, because he was Victorian and male. Romance novels are usually very good prose, written in a way that attracts a reader’s attention with not only what they are saying, but the format and style they say it in. I intend to add links to some of the sites I’ve looked at with information on selling statistics for romance novels and the most popular types of novels. There is a set formula followed by these authors without this formula being enforced or even stated. My thesis will look at this formula and my tech project will highlight some of the basis points and plot devices in romance and briefly explain what they are. Hopefully this will help me to more clearly define my thesis proposal and my thesis itself.

Journal 4 for Comp & Comp - Bolter's Meaning

Please excuse this if it's not coherant. . .The flu medicine is making my system do loops. - Ashli =^.^=

I think Bolter’s book attempts to offer up the idea of an ever changing genre of writing. The writing space he attempts to define is not only the place where you postulate your ideas, but the mind where you form and shape the ideas you put out. In this way, the writing space of the mind is constantly being remediated by the changes our mind makes to the way we think and the way we perceive ideas and information. He outlines that not only is the field in which we write ever changing, but also the words, ideas, and the way we perceive them. As we saw in Chapter four, pictures and graphics are being remediated with text and vice versus. In this way, pictures are used on the web to enhance or even replace text such as a mailbox being used instead of the word Email. There are also places to get talking graphics instead of typing out instructions. Therefore, we remediate text with visual and sound art in order to catch the attention of the audience more readily and remove the need to read from our sites. However, Bolter makes it clear that those opposed to the remediation of print into hypertext often do so because the hypertext form could alter the argument by delineating the logical order of their idea. They also resist the loss of the authorial voice in hypertext that no longer lets the author denote the next step in the process or secquence in the story, but rather lets the reader decide how the story unfolds – in this manner, it is harder to distinguish who the real author is because the plot is no longer formulated by the writer but rather the audience. But, as Bolter makes it clear, there will always be a remediation of what is present because it is within human nature to always try to change things, whether it is for the better or not.

Journal 3 for Computers and Composition: The Problem with Bolter's Logic

Perhaps one of the major problems in Bolter’s explanation of hypertext is that instead of defining what it is, he defines what it does. In this manner, it makes it harder to separate what he considers hypertext from preexisting definitions of hypertext, such as those used in a hypertext markup language (HTML). He also uses the Cartesian method of explaining hypertext by what it is not. For example, hypertext, to Bolter, is non-linear, unlike a book, which follows a linear plot order. He also attempts to argue that the book is becoming less popular as a means of publication because of the accesability of internet publishing, but contradicts himself in stating that “Both as authors and as readers, we still regard books and journals as the place to locate our most prestigious texts” (Bolter 3). However, as we see with the library at this university, it is becoming simplier to find a full print journal as a pdf file or e-book, affectively cutting out the need to host years of printed paper journals on the shelves. Are these e-books hypertext as Bolter means the word? I find it hard to dissemilate what he means from what he says. Perhaps with this seperation of printed word and thought Bolter attempting to redefine what he means by hypertext, but I’m still not quite sure of his meaning. I know what the HTML coding does for building, but is this hypertext of links and pages what he means when he talks about hypertext media? If he means the hypertext language of the internet as a means of remediating the language of the printed book, can’t he just say that? Does he have to bury it in literary metaphors and theory of what it should be? Not everything is a metaphor or theory. I think it’s this abstraction that helps to distract readers from an accurate definition of his point.

The Hypertextuality of Graphics - Journal 2 C&C

For the most part, I am inclined to believe that even as we go to an image and visual based society from a textual, logic based founding we are still more inclined to use visual media arts as a enhancement of textual applications. Even if the text is not completely visible, as a viewer and reader, we are more inclined to pay attention to it and focus our attention on it if there is a visual stimulus accompanying the words. I was searching on friendfinder.net, trying to find a pen pal and updating my profile when they showed a statistic stating that you were three times as more likely to receive a response to your profile if you included a picture with it, and ten times as likely with a video file. There is an old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words, but in this age of hypermediacy, those thousand words may very well be hidden in the picture to start with. One of my favorite examples, which you can see below, is the header graphic for a site that is no longer runnning. Elaine Castillo is the author of the picture, and she incorporates the words into a montage of pictures giving the feel of dispair and loss to an otherwise normal picture of a man and mulitple shots of a woman. It’s the text that lets you understand what is hiding in his eyes and what exactly she’s bracing herself against. Even though the words overlap themselves in a display of color, the words that are discernable say enough about the picture to not need to be able to see every part in its entirety. The fact that you can’t see every part of the text or the graphics also gives a sense of chaos and the unknown between these two people. Perhaps they are lovers. Perhaps it is a tale of unrequited love. Perhaps they love each other and don’t know it. The fact that there are so many different ways the picture can be interpreted with the texts given, or judging from the text missing, leads us to realize the hypertextuality of the graphic in regards to the user’s definition of the outcome of the picture based on what they see of it.

The Computers and Composition example from Elaine Castillo's "The World." Created in Printshop Pro. 

Computers and Composition

Okay, for the next few months, this will become my Computers and Composition journal for class so that I don't have another blog added onto my account. It doesn't really matter who reads it, cause I don't have anything to hide. So, if you're interested in my Tech class, go ahead and read until April. After that, it will go back to being my personal blog where I just post anything that I feel like rambling about. . .or flaming. . .I might do a little of that, but only about things, not about people's work cause that's just rude. People work hard to write their stories, and they don't need to be flamed at. . .a little constructive criticism works just fine. . .Okay. . .Back to my four papers before Friday. Take care!

Neku-chan,
Ashli

Mardi Gras

Once again it's that time of year that makes me glad to be in Louisiana. It's Mardi Gras. That time of year where people from all over flock to Houma and New Orleans to get drunk and yell for little plastic trinkets that really don't mean anything unless you know some one who is going to ride the next year, or you're going to sell them to one of the many companies that sells them for more to some first time rider the next year. Of course you could get doubloons, but are you actually going to do something with that? And you could get blow ups, but they just pop and end up all over the house. Stuffed animals are almost like that too, and they're one of the most sought after things on the floats, well minus the underwear and the long thick beads. (known to most as pearls cause of the white ones that vaguely resemble the real thing.) I personally like to play with the stuffed animals, but unfortunately for my parents and happily for me, they end up piling up in my room. . .lots and lots of variations of teddies and such. My favorite are the pandas, but they're pretty rare. I did get a funny little dancing reindeer tonight though. It sings "rocking robin." Kinda cute, but not really. Maybe he'll grow on me, and maybe I'll just throw him in the hammock with the rest of my stuffed toys. . .There are quite a few of them up there now, and I keep getting more. Maybe I'll give them as throws one year, or I'll pass them on to my kids. . . something. . .

Okay, Ghost in the Shell is coming on, later.

Kat

Procrastination

You know, paper writing time is the perfect time to remember that you haven't done a personal blog in quite a long time and so instead of doing your paper on media studies and ideas in analytical writing you convince yourself that you are justified because you wrote a sentence and therefore you can write a full blog and maybe play with the color and text and edit it several times before going back to your paper.

Maybe.

Maybe I just want to feel justified.

Maybe.

Maybe I lie too.

Actually I've done a full page and a half and that's a lot of work on a three page paper. ..half you know. That justifies me reading comics and blogging. After all, I haven't blogged in this one in forever, even if I keep updating Cowboy's Song in the other.

I made it in Argus. Who knows if I won. ..well, Angelin does, but she's the editor. I'm in and that's good enough. . .it's publication and publicity and us writers for all of our solitary lives, love praise. It's a blessing and a curse: The one time we crawl out of our fun little worlds and into the one of harsh reality. Great, huh?

I really must finish now so I can edit while Rico's in class and then print it for tomorrow's rough draft peer-editting session.

Ta Ta For Now!
ME in all my weyrdness.