Portfolio: Finalities

Jesus Christ Pro Skater

In the year of our Board 2016, the son of man will appear to teach the worthy how to kickflip. And he will be shunned and cast out and none but the wisest may understand his true virtue. Read this gospel all ye faithful and rejoice for the most righteous skater loves you all.

(Mark 10:25)

The Tree of the Empty Lot

In the yard of a house that has long stood empty, an apple tree watches over an old grave. Weathering the heat of summer, the tree stands resolute for its dear friend, buried near its roots. But the winds change and memories are forgotten. The apple tree of the empty lot may not survive without a friendly hand.

(A Tree with a Solitary Grave)

A Warning of Shadows

Why do you run out of your basement at night. Why do you hesitate before walking into a dark room. Why do you sometimes feel you're being watched when you know you're alone. Is it possible that something is watching you from the shadows? Investigate at your own peril.

(The Shadows Watch You)

Falling Skies

Merle has had a dream that he will soon meet his end. Because he is a wise man, he knows not to trifle with the fates. He knows that his dark end will find him whether he runs from it or not, but by accepting his fate so quickly, might he be ushering it in?

(On Old Man Contemplates the Future)

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This project has been my attempt to write four very different kinds of stories all based in a similar setting. Each takes place outside of the context of its original myth and in an average suburban neighborhood. At first I had hoped they might all appear to take place in the same neighborhood but I don't believe that message came across very well. What I hope did come across, however, is the idea that stories, regardless of how preposterous they seem, are, in fact, actually very close to us. We create stories to learn more about ourselves and I think that bringing them out of fantasy land and closer to ourselves might even help us to understand them better. I have written here a comedy based on a well known Christian story, a bittersweet allegory based on a lesser known story from the same faith, a horror story based on elements a South African myth, and a story somewhere between comedy and tragedy from the ancient British tale of Merlin. 

I don't know what any readers have taken away from these stories. At the very least, I hope each provoked some emotion in people. If, however, I wrote for no other purpose than to please myself and flex my writing skills, I can be happy with the state of this project. 

Reading Notes A: Russian Fairy Tales

The story of the greedy old reverend and the goatskin is interesting in a mildly disturbing way. He refuses to bury the man's wife without being paid and then when he learns of his great treasure dons a goatskin to sneak in and steal it away from him. The most interesting part is how the skin fuses with him as a punishment though. By ripping off the skin the wife also rips off his real skin.

I think I love the story of the bad wife more than any story i've read so far in this class. It's honestly my favorite. The wife is so contrarian she does everything the opposite of what her husband says even to the point of throwing herself into tartarus. Then she eats all the little demons in there except the one who escapes. That little guy runs quite a racket with the bad wifes husband until he possesses the final woman and he runs off the demon by threatening it with his old wife again. It's really amazing. She was so scary she ate demons and scared them even when she wasn't around. I love russian fairy tales.

The one with the cat is a weird story it all goes very matter of fact but i guess ultimately its about fate and trusting god. the really wasn't any explanation for what happened in the end though i dont know why the eldest brother was a 3 year old.

There's a lot of themes of death and trickery and costumes and fate and being punished or rewarded by god in these stories. All of them kind of go along the same basic lines.

(Cat from the story The Tree Copecks)

Russian Fairy Tales by W. R. S. Ralston (1887)

Week 13 Review

This was actually a very interesting gif with some really helpful information. I didn't actually know that I could text questions to the front desk I mean goodness that could have come in real handy when doing research projects. I do wonder how quickly they respond though and how many students actually use that service. Most of the other things on this list I am at least somewhat familiar with although I really sure utilize the reserve textbooks more often. 

Thanksgiving Break Announcement 

The only announcement I have to make is late. There was a protest held at the capitol building today and although people can't attend it now since it's already happened, I encourage everyone to look for it in the news. I believe it was called the Oklahoma rally against hate. In addition, I encourage people to keep their eyes open for opportunities to join protests in the future.

Review: One Day More

I really very nearly done with this class. I'm trying to do a lot of extra credit in order to get it out of the way because I know for a fact that I'm going to have to focus very hard on my upcoming social theory take-home final. I have a whole week to do it which means it's going to be very difficult. Mostly what I'm looking forward to though, is taking a week off from classes and going home.

I love helping my mom cook although I love it more when my brothers choose to pitch in and help. They've been doing it in the last few years though so I don't have too much to complain about. Mostly, though, I need to be able to catch up on my reading while I'm free. There's an awful lot of reading I need to do so I'm not entirely sure I'm going to be able to do it all but I really do need to try. I think that if I don't, this take home final is going to be a lot harder and more stressful than it needs to be. 

I know for sure that I need to go back and read the book on authoritarianism because I feel like he’s definitely going to ask us about it on the test. I had only read the 3^rd chapter of it because that’s what a classmate had told me to read when in actuality we were supposed to read the whole thing. That book’s huge though so I’m apprehensive about that. I also skipped a whole week of class do to stress from the election and need to do my reading on that too. Finally I have to do the reading for the very last week in that class. I’ve never heard of the mushroom at the end of the world but the professor says it’s a weird book. I’ll take his word for it. 

(the possibly primitivist book we have to read)

Wikipedia Trails: Sinbad to Obelisk

I started on the page, Sinbad the Sailor because it was the focus of one of the stories I read and commented on this week. I really only remember the Disney version of the story and was wondering when the original took place. Sinbad is an Arabic story and his hometown is in present day Baghdad. The story is part of the 1001 Nights but doesn't appear in the original manuscripts, only showing up a couple hundred years later in the 17th and 18th Centuries.

(Sinbad the Sailor, Milo Winter, 1914)

From here I went to the page Indian Ocean, as this was where the sailors whose stories influence the tale of Sinbad sailed. It is the 3rd largest ocean on earth and is surrounded by Asia, Africa, and Australia. This ocean also has one of the largest phytoplankton blooms in the summer because of its monsoon winds. It also harbors the Indian Ocean garbage patch which is 1.9 million square miles, made of mostly plastic, and circulates between Australia and Africa.

(Topographic Map of Indian Ocean)

From here I moved to Ancient Egypt as they were one of the first people to explore the Indian Ocean. This was an ancient civilization in Northeastern Africa that formed around 3150 BC. In the latest stages of the civilization, they were subjugated by one of Alexander the Great's generals, Ptolemy. Later, under Cleopatra, it feel to Roman rule. 

(The sphinx and pyramid of Giza)

Lastly, I moved to Obelisks. These are tall, four-sided obelisks that were commonly built in Egypt for religious reasons but have been found in cultures all over the world. They were common throughout Egypt, Assyria, the Axumite kingdom, Rome, the Byzantium Empire, and occasionally in pre-columbus America. The obelisk is still a common form of monument today although they are not always religious.

(The Obelisk from Luxor in Paris)

Learning by Heart: Maintaining Attention

I am not sure just how effective this attention technique would turn out for other people but I am able to successfully employ it and, perhaps, other people might be able to benefit from it if they somehow think the same way I do.

I often have trouble concentrating on long readings and my mind will tend to wander. Before I know it, I've been staring at a single page for 20 minutes daydreaming about other things or I distract myself by randomly wanting to google something that has no connection to what I was already doing.

In order to keep myself more engaged with my work I need to switch tasks consistently in order to break gridlock. Often, I do this by switching between multiple readings. I find that not only does this keep me reading for longer, but it also helps me to synthesize the things that I'm reading into something more coherent to talk about in class. Usually, I employ this technique by reading several pages of a article or book until I feel myself getting bored. This can happen anywhere between 3 and 10 pages, or even never if I really like what I'm reading! When I do get bored though, I make a note of where I left off and then switch to another reading. When I get board of that, I can either switch to yet another reading (as I typically have a great many due at one), or I can switch back to the original reading.

I understand that this technique may not work for everyone, but I doubt that I am the only person who thinks this way and gets distracted so easily. I need to be engaged with things moving more rapidly and I think it's possible that other people have a similar problem and could benefit from the same system.

(a somewhat unnerving picture of someone multi-tasking)

Growth Mindset: Graduate School

Graduate school's been on my mind a lot lately since the deadlines for applications are swiftly approaching. Although I'm apprehensive about being smart enough to do the work required in grad school, I think I've been learning in my social theory class that I am, in fact, fully able to handle the kind of critical thinking and work management to succeed in such a program.

When I started my social theory class I was really pretty pessimistic about whether or not I could keep up with the rest of the class and actually said so on the first day of class. I think that, even now, I may be a bit behind the learning curve when it comes to the work and critical analyses required in that class but over the last semester I've learned that most of what I'm afraid of is putting a large amount of effort into the class only to fail it. Sometimes, then, I don't try my best because if I don't do my best and fail then I can say that the only reason I failed was because I didn't try my hardest. Trying my hardest and failing is a much scarier thing to consider.

As the semester's gone on, I think I've come more to terms with being able to fail occasionally in class if it means learning from my mistakes. I'm trying to speak more in class in order to be corrected if need-be although such a thing still gives me anxiety. I've got a long way to go especially considering I'm not yet in grad school but I think I'm getting there.

(Marx's Capital, one of the difficult books we had to read for class)

Tech Tip: Convert Video to Audio

If you ever, for any reason need to convert a youtube video to an audio file and strip out the video, there's a very easy site for it. This video to audio converter only requires the url of the video you want to convert and then will proceed to turn it into an mp3 file. These kind of files can be used for all sorts of things from listening to music, to editing in an audio editor, to making it into a ringtone. This is actually how I make all of my ringtones and text tones. It's much funner to rip audio from youtube for ringtones than to use the boring defaults tones and it's free! Happy Listening!

(original screenshot from vid-to-aud converter site)

Reading Notes A: Dante's Inferno

I am getting a bit confused by the way things are phrased in this so I'm gonna summarize what seems relevant:

Dante arrives in a horrible forest. He tries to leave towards the light but a lion blocks his path. Turning back around, he meets Virgil who offers to guide him another way through the forest and through hell, after which he will end up passing through heaven with an angelic guide.

The people who are neither evil nor believers are trapped in a sort of limbo. They cannot die but are forgotten and forsaken from the earth and left to be tortured by wasps and worms.

So this is the real limbo. Good Christian people who were never baptized still live in hell. seems pretty harsh. There are people here that are fictional. It's not just a warning for real people then.

I'm a bit confused by the lovers bit. Were they there simply because they fornicated? Or cheated on others? Or are they grouped as lovers but are damned as non-christians? May need to re-read this carefully but i dont get it right now.

Cerberus the guardian eats dirt. River Styx = hatred. people consumed by anger, ripping each other apart, some lie under the water, drowning, sighing

Furies are large, bloody women covered in various kinds of snakes.

(The Furies)

Dante's Divine Comedy, translated by Tony Kline (2002)

Review: Vine Deloria

Today, November 13th, is the anniversary of the death of Vine Deloria Jr. I wouldn't have known that without having read the articles. I don't know a lot about the philosopher except that he was the first, widely read and popularly acknowledged Native philosopher. In the class I took last semester (Native American Philosophy, which I encourage everyone to take), we read his book God is Red.

It was a really poignant book although I would caution any Christian who considers reading it to go into it with an understanding of the devastation that has been wrought on North and South America in the name of Christianity. It doesn't go light on those topics but it brings up some very good and very important critiques not only of Christianity but of all proselytizing religions. The book, and the class as a whole, had a real impact on me. Native issues was never something that was in the forefront of my mind before but I've really tried to be careful and considerate of it since then.

I'm glad to be able to acknowledge the death of such a great thinker and revolutionary activist.

(Vine Deloria Jr., 2002 Photograph by Cyrus McCrimmon

Associated Press)