Tribute to Edward Gorey.
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Like Facebook’s timeline,
it’s time to rewind:
realign, reassign, recombine
the DNA from scene of my crimes.
[And yes, I'm doing this in rhyme.]
Let’s start from Cloud 9:
From Earth's birth, I remember last year when-
Dishing here with Red Sox fans at college in 2010;
Now living in fear of not paying the rent.
I used to stick this in my “quotes” store:
But I realized more here-
to truly hear=
only you can adhere
to the words you pioneer. So:
My ex-wallpaper on my desktop.
The fresh wallpaper to be next swapped.
“This is Not the Net You Knew“:
The new Twitter frittered the nightly news.
We paid Steve Jobs his knightly dues.
Google ‘s newest doodle ooh’s-
while Android’s Ice Cream Sandwich stews.
It’s sugar, and spice, and everything nice-
Thus, a New Year's resolution: cure sweet tooth.
But it comes down to stop sugarcoating the truth-
a countdown to a year with all & nothing to lose.
Midnight City
Black Friday shopping. Think angry masses of post-Thanksgiving (ironically, not as grateful for sparing anyone in the way of that discount) New Yorkers (and some Amish among them too- spotted) whose like-minded ideology echo this “Seinfeld” sentiment:
George: All right, but we’re not buyin’ it at Bloomingdale’s. I will buy it, you pay me back later. I’ll sniff out a deal. I have a sixth sense.
Jerry: Cheapness is not a sense.
(Aha! Maybe bargains are the universal cure to battling that tryptophan?)
Midnight city shopping sounded like an adventure, so I decided to join the party of misers & shopaholics. Since I do most of my year’s shopping on Black Friday, I equipped myself with a battle plan- a backpack, bottle of water, and mental breakdown of each destination en route within each time frame.
There I stood. “Waiting for a roar. Looking at the mutating skyline.”
Honestly, I was a little disappointed I didn’t get to first-handedly collect any amusing stories like these here:
Nevertheless, I’m relieved that the day was rated PG; although after a few minutes of initially feeling the adrenaline rush from the crowds, it got overwhelming. Of all the Black Fridays I’ve stuck around for, the turnout this year seemed a lot larger. Good for the economy, I guess. And for that, I’m thankful.
And for Cyber Monday (Black Friday’s e-version..or another deal’s eversion). According to this, Shop.org: you rock.
And for you, Siri.
And for Google +.
Last but not least- for a long weekend pondering the fate of technology. And like the ghosts of Christmas past/present/future, what the human race/you/and I choose to do with it.
Hi, Peter. What’s happening? We need to talk about your TPS reports.
One of those short, succulent, & simple movies.
So was my visit to the MoMA.
First stop was here:
'Standard Deviations: Types and Families in Contemporary Design'
Integration of technology into the human race has been a curious journey from the beginning of accumulation in the human pool for talent. I’ve never been a self-proclaimed computer fanatic well-versed in ‘leet speak‘, but the more we marry the digital species, a kind of interracial fascination has sprouted over the years.
There’s still my obsession with words- but until now, I’ve never studied cyber language closely. Ever wondered how those Microsoft fonts were designed (my favorite still has to be Jokerman; certainly had too much time on my hands experimenting as a child..)? For machines by humans, of course. Which is exactly why I find the following ironic:
"Never send a human to do a machine's job." Matrix moment, anyone?
Geek's version of fun: playing with typefaces.
I suppose in a way, writing is advertising itself. In the creative process especially, less is truly more. Writing poetry over the years, I found myself shunning and dropping articles (“a”/”‘the”) left and right. Copywriting and logo branding are perfect examples of ‘beauty is nothing without brains’. Why else would Diet Coke give its face a makeover, or JCPenney vomit their words of girls being too pretty to do homework?
Also, I learned a new word of the day:
A "pangram": A sentence that contains all letters of the alphabet. Sure beats playing Scrabble.
And reunited with an ancient childhood friend:
Wow. Anyone remember these?
On to the next stop:
'Talk to Me: Design and the Communication between People and Objects'
You may have heard of Google’s new app “Newsmap“:
Google's Newsmap feature.
When it first came out, I was a little irritated- seeing as I had mentally concocted that idea a year before (guess it pays to patent!). The only difference is that I hadn’t thought of the color coding (in addition, instead of providing links to articles, I thought that my ideal version of a news article would list under 10 bullet points of relevant statistics, facts, & quotes).
I’m glad that communication has become so much more diversely interactive- like Chris Woebken’s billboard housing bats and translating bat lingo for humans:
Finally, maybe we'll get to see Batman.
Or Jack Schulze’s “Here and There”- a 3D spin off Foursquare (which reminds me of this futuristic scene from “Inception”)
Dialogue really has transformed- from written to oral to digital. Think this image really best sums it up:
So, what’s happening? We are talking. Maybe about TPS reports, but in terms of social media, the constant chatter that drives the majority of us to communicate with each other is overlapping. I think it comes down to how much you want to say, and what truly is important- minimally speaking, just listening.
How do YOU want to define yourself?
The question remains, especially in this jobless economy: Do you want to let the world know who you are, without the bravado of vanity metrics?
“Joanna: Yeah. You know what, yeah, I do. I do want to express myself, okay. And I don’t need 37 pieces of flair to do it.”
[And as for tomorrow, I think I'll be okay...]
Got Milk? (For creative juices that have stopped flowing, that is.)
July 27th was a Wednesday.
At the end of a workday, a bobcat walked to Barnes and Noble’s (which reminds me-I’ll miss my childhood spent at Borders), and met up with a few other Batesies at one of her favorite culinary spots in Chelsea. They took the 6 up to Central Park to see Imelda May in action:
In the time we bobcats roamed last night, we discussed our professional goals (real world talk…). In the never-ending quest to “search for ourselves” as we get older, I now have many young bobcats asking me for career advice. For the ones who haven’t decided yet, I first show them this video:
Then, I remind them that’s what the BCDC‘s for, but I’m afraid I can only offer a simple solution: you have to love what you do. Just as you want a brand or person to be ‘authentic’, only can you be the best at your job. Ever since the age of 9, I knew I always wanted to write ( I’ll probably post a story or two from my early pre-adolescent phase, if I rack up the guts to), analyze something (warning: I am the worst person to see a movie with), and simply, hang around people .
The only advice I give, however, is to really check for cover letter typos (especially when listening to a ’90s party anthem you haven’t heard in a long time). Because there’s nothing more embarrassing than:
“I can be reached at *insert phone # here*. “
and writing instead:
“I can be breached at *insert phone # here*.”
Oh, privacy issues these days….Speaking of which, like many others, I’ve developed a slight obsession with Google- from Facebook to Google+, and Firefox to Google Chrome (that said: move over, Jersey Shore, because Commercial Kings is in). Maybe it’s a sign, but the whole world is googling (well, probably except China).
July 27th was a Wednesday.
At the end of a workday, a bobcat’s story concluded happily.
Wafels & Dinges: We finally meet!
Social Media, or “Antisocial” Media?
We live in a social network. Whether it’s which dorm or house you reside on campus, which professors you have, or even where you sit in Commons- instantaneously makes us all part of the “Bates bubble“. We hold this truth to be self-evident: that the velocity regardless of however fast the individual travels, our fate is inevitable. We’re bound to cross paths, and I mean, “worlds collide” {Here’s a “Seinfeld”-ian example that reminds us why we can’t live alone}
It’s only recently that so many people who can’t stop talking (especially businesses to market products) have taken it to a whole new level: the Internet. As we “twitter” and fritter away throughout our lives, it fascinates me that the Web has become a virtual chat-room for all to come and go to express themselves freely- although this certainly does entail harmful “antisocial” consequences as well, like the spawning of the privacy debate on Facebook , the suicide of Tyler Clementi, and most recently, this WikiLeaks controversy.
And of course, as Bates is always a beehive for boundless buzz, a dialogue about dialogue is to be expected. As part of the “Race in a Post-Human World” panel (for those including me who read “post-human” and said, “What in the world is that?”, click here)l, Bates is hosting a series of lecturers who will talk about online identities. This evening, author Lisa Nakamura is to discuss the roles that race and sexuality play in the cyberterrain.
Whether we like it or not, social media is here to stay. After all, I am writing this blog. Because as the storyline goes, “you don’t get to 500 million friends without making a few enemies.”
Noonday Concert
Ever needed a lunch study break? I don’t mean to boast, but Bates is the one of the few colleges that offers weekly noonday concerts that are free and open to the public (seriously, Google “college noonday concert” and look at the results). There’s typically a showing of few interested music aficionados, but the majority of those willing to lend an ear are the local residents (of course, this is not to say that Batesies don’t actively take advantage of this opportunity, but to most of us, noon is a precious time for lunch- until the next class starts at 1:10). Sure, I was hungry, but ever since last year, my artistic appetite has been whetted threefold.
So, I decided to catch my first concert. The minute Salome Sandoval‘s vocal presence appeared onto stage, I was left speechless. It was as if I had been whisked away back into some haunting medieval court rendition, lute and all. Unfortunately, I had left my camera somewhere in the past, so here’s a contemporary substitute (YouTube):
“The Role of Journalism in a Democracy”
Earlier at 7:30 in Chase Lounge tonight, I was pretty stoked to join in on a panel (presenting were: (Rex Rhoades, Executive Editor of the Lewiston Sun Journal; Thomas Fiedler, Dean of Boston University’s College of Communication and former Executive Editor of the Miami Herald; and Justin Ellis, a staff member at the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University and former columnist/blogger, staff writer and multimedia producer for the Portland Press Herald) on the current state of journalism. No doubt, the media has been an essential component of shaping society, whether biased or unbiased- from the history of tools of newspaper printing to television and radio broadcasting, to the Internet.
The chief, lingering issue that hung somberly over our heads throughout the evening was: Has the news lost what it’s stood for? I thought about it in relation to my academic experiences: when I’m assigned to research something for class, I always find it highly disturbing that Wikipedia comes up first on the results in Google Search. Of course. no offense directed towards the creators of Wikipedia (as they are doing their job trying to provide the optimal references for accurate information), but since anyone is free to submit anything on the site, the line between fact and popular opinion becomes blurred (and ultimately, it comes down to: what really is fact and what is opinion)
It’s also no secret that the media is highly politicized (as a result, so is the nation). We may not realize it, but the news has a staggeringly subliminal impact on its viewers. It’s become not just simply information, but when the news tags its own commentaries on its stories (for example, news talk shows) it becomes its own product- fed to unsuspecting consumers, Republican or Democrat.
So how can we coexist in a democracy, where we are uncensored to express our own opinions, yet must keep them in check when delivering the news? I guess the only answer remains- as Jerry Seinfeld would put it, look to the black-and-white cookie.
What is the Difference between “Critical” and “Analytical”?
It’s the last day of fall break before classes resume again, and while GREs studying, I’ve stumbled upon two answer choices: “critical” and “analytical”. The process of elimination- it’s 50/50, life or death.
It was a simple test practice test question, but it made me wonder. What really was the difference between these two words? (Side note: Not a good idea to think about this when I actually take the GREs) To me, they seemed interchangeable with lots of murky overlap in between, like “advertising” and “marketing”, or “sociology” and “anthropology”. After painstakingly scrutinizing searches on Google, I guess the gist went something like this: although both are interdependent on one another, a “critical” approach implies a more subjective or deliberate interpretation, while an “analytical” process simply deals with the facts and concluding inferences from the data given.
In an aspect, this relates to the essence of a liberal arts education. It fascinates me when I ask what major someone is, because it reveals whether they’re “critical” (for instance, English or Politics) or “analytical” thinkers (such as Biology or Economics). At a liberal arts institution like Bates, we’re all thrown into the mix and can’t have one without the other. Similarly, a job environment can’t exist without both. For example, if a company occupies too much analysis, then there’s not much room for improvement. Yet if it’s too critical in finding fault with a product, then efficiency cannot be achieved either.
So what would I classify myself as? I think I’m a little bit of both- and this is why I’m here. Process of elimination.
