Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Walker Walks Us Through Narration

Who can forget the classic computer game, Doom? I personally never had the game, but eagerly anticipated playing it at my friends house after school on a near daily basis. What fun! Oh sweet Nostalgia!
Part of the game's success should be attributed to the feeling one had while playing that he or she was in the game. It was completely interactive: you could look up at the ceilings, crouch down and check out the floor, and of course blast your way out of dungeon with hell fire.

The game was certainly designed to be interactive, and as our blogging class learned by reading an article by Jill Walker, many successful writings are designed in the same vein. Her article called Do You Think You're Part of This? Digital Texts and the Second Person Address, compares a successful narration to the success of the video game Doom. Walker tries to break down the essence of narration by teaching the importance of allowing the reader to feel like he is in the text.

What could be a better analogy than the classic video game, Doom? Perhaps her attempts to compare a successful narration with voyeurism. "When you read a narrative, you enjoy being a voyeur." I looked up the word voyeur in several dictionaries to see if it had a connotation that didn't relate to sexual gratification. I didn't find any, and this made me cringe when I read her repeated allusions to voyeurism. Perhaps she should have found a more suitable word.

Maddox is King

If you do a google search for The Best Page In The Universe, the first page listed will take you to Maddox.xmission.com. The page is full of Maddox's humor writings which range in topics from How to Spot a Pedophile to How to Kill Yourself Like a Man.

While his postings are often hilarious, I must admit that the funniest post of his that I read was incidentally the first post of his that I read over three years ago. It is called, I am Better than Your Kids, and it is a critique of a series of crude drawings presumably created by kindergarteners. Maddox bashes the children's work as if they were submitting a first novel to a publishing house, and it made me laugh out loud.

Maddox's website is very similar to a blog: it simply has a long list of links to the various humor articles that he has written. He used to update his site several times a month, but recently informed his readers that his updates will be limited because he is working on a book deal.

Maddox has never put any ads on his site and claims that he gets more daily traffic than websites for huge corporations like Pepsi.

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

STOP THE WAR (blogs)

I have no sympathy for American soldiers who were ordered to stop blogging by army officials as stated in the article "The Blogs of War" by John Hockenberry.

According to the article, some soldiers were ordered to suspend their blogs for various reasons including the fact that some blogs gave away information about military position and capabilities. Suspending blogs with such content seems to be the most logical thing that our army has done in recent years.

Hockenberry provides snippets of soldiers' blogs that are not only extremely well written and poetic, but are also largely insightful into the life and minds of our current soldiers. I admit that these war blogs are captivating, but I don't think they should exist.

If our soldiers are so compelled to share their stories, why not keep a journal and publish it after the war? Is the instant gratification of blogging so necessary that it could potentially jeopardize our war efforts?

The whole issue reminds me of my grandmother's wartime letters. My grandfather was stationed at Pearl Harbor during its infamous battle. My grandmother wrote two letters home every week, and then suddenly stopped for over three weeks from December 7th till sometime in January.

In her first letter to her family after the attack, my grandmother neglected to mention anything about the war, the Japanese, or the state of Pearl Harbor. The military censored every letter she wrote, and prohibited any content related to the status of the base. Perhaps the army was more paranoid back then, but I think it is a no brainer for them to censor or even prohibit war blogs during wartime. Because information is power and too much information could be dangerous.

Cha Cha Cha Cha Changes

Okay, I made a few changes/improvements to my blogs.

I sperated the paragraphs in the Bernstein article so that it is easier on the eyes.
I added a link my blog about a woman's blog entitled "Miles From Fenway" because I realized that it might be helpful for readers to reference what I was blogging about.
I also felt that my blogs needed some color, so I added a picture of Biz Stone to my blog about him.

I also felt like adding this chart of countries that I have visited. If you want to make your own, click here.




create your own visited countries map

Gudalunas: The Essence and Impact of Blogs

Yes, I am aware that the newspaper industry is suffering in the light of the internet and information age. And I can't argue that blogs are growing rapidly, with tens of thousands of new blogs being created everyday. But will blogging replace the need for newspapers? In ten years?

This is the casual sentiment of Dr. Gudalunas, a Fairfield University Communications Professor who spoke to our class about the essence and impact of blogs. I can't say that I agree with much of what Dr. Gudalunas feels is true about the blogging industry. How can he even propose a question like: Will newspapers exist in 10 years???

I believe that there is a certain understood integrity about the newspaper industry that is void in the world of blogging. Are blogs interesting, provocative and informative? YES. Do I believe things I read on blogs? Yes, but not everything, and I would never rely on it as a substantial news source.

Why not??? Because The United States has a larger land mass than China Clearly any joker out there can write anything he pleases and there are virtually no bloggin' rules to comply with.

Certainly Dr. Gudalunas has a lot to teach people about blogging, but I feel that he is slightly carried away with their current impact on our society. I think this was made clear when he asked for a show of hands of students in our class who read blogs regularly, and there were barely enough to bake a cake (assuming that you need at least two to bake a cake).

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Poo Poo FUSA Raffle: Who Cares?

Imagine: the power to park ANYWHERE.

This may appeal to you if you are a Fairfield University student who is confined by strict parking regulations. This may be especially appealing to upperclassmen who have a 15 minute walk from their townhouse to the Dolan School of Business (and aren't allowed to park at the Dolan School of Business).

This is why our student government, FUSA (Fairfield University Student Association) organized a raffle which gave all-access parking passes to benefit the Special Olympics.

The Problem: Two FUSA Senators were among the winners of this coveted prize.

So two of the FUSA Senators won their own raffle? Where does the mirror’s editorial staff (the mirror is our student newspaper) get the audacity to accuse Senators (elected representatives!) of foul play? “Shame on the FUSA Senators…”

Naturally, I could care less because I am a Fairfield University Resident Assistant equipped with an all-access faculty parking sticker (Oh Yeah!). But seriously, the fact is that we all know that anyone involved in FUSA constitutes the minute percentage of students who actually care about anything at this school, and are working to improve it. The apathy is sickening and I think all members of FUSA should have all-access parking stickers, just because.

Because The Mirror is one of the only Fairfield institutions that a majority of the FU community pays attention to, I feel they should use their powers for good instead evil. Don't bite the hand that feeds you.

Biz Stone Let The Blogs Out

Biz Stone has the coolest name: BIZZZZZZZZZ!

He also has a cool, edgy and readable writing style. In his book Who Let The Blogs Out?, his writing is instructional, yet humorous. The content of his book, while often repetitive, seems essential to anyone new to the blogging world (like myself). Here is a picture of Biz:





Incidentally, my favorite quote from his book is only analogously related to blogging and is provided by computer programmer, Larry Wall, “I am told that when they built the University of California at Irvine, they did not put in any sidewalks the first year. Next year they came back and looked at where all the cow trails were in the grass and put the sidewalks there.” This quote pointedly illustrates how the rules, regulations and customs of blogging fell into place on their own.

One of the “unwritten” rules of blogging, emphasized by Stone, is linking to other bloggers and websites. This practice often proves to be mutually beneficial in that it will add traffic to blogs and sites that you admire, and hopefully the favor will be returned and links to your blog will be added. While it is less formal than citing sources for something like a research paper, linking to other blogs is a common courtesy well-understood in the blogging community.