I feel like every time I write a blog post I end up talking about something my roommates said. I’m sure they will be relieved to know the assignment is over now, so they can stop having to give me ideas on what to write about. As I read “Adam,” I was reminded of what something my roommate that’s an English major said. In one of her classes, she’s studying the books MetaMaus and Maus by Art Spiegelman. Spiegelman, whose parents survived Auschwitz, coins the term holokitsch to describe the manipulative use of Holocaust narratives in pop culture. “There’s a kind of kitschitification in our cultures in general. It’s that thing of trying to always go for the sentimental money shot whenever one can that informs our debates about abortion, informs our presidential races, informs much of our popular culture. It’s all got to be reduced to Good Guys and…
Show, Don’t Tell
Every casual writer has heard the advice about avoiding -ly adverbs. The argument comes down to the proverbial rule: “show, don’t tell.” Instead of telling that a character said something sadly, show what they did to portray that they felt sad. Since I had heard about the caution against -ly adverbs, it was interesting to see evidence potentially backing up the rule in Nabokov’s Favorite Word is Mauve: What the Numbers Reveal About the Classics, Bestsellers, and Our Own Writing. Blatt measures the use of -ly adverbs in what he determines the literary community considers to be “great books.” He then finds a pretty decent correlation between the lack of adverbs and an author’s more praised works. While his research is very compelling, it raises a lot of questions for me. Most of the books mentioned are at least fifty years old, some even dating back to the 1800s. Do…
“This is the Bad Place!”
As a student paying their way through college, I do not have the money to even think about buying cryptoart, cryptocurrency, or NFTs. Because of my low funds, I have never looked into that market. After reading Everest Pipkin’s essay “Here is the Article You Can Send to People When They Say ‘But the Environmental Issues with Cryptoart will be Solved Soon, Right?’” I’m relieved that I haven’t. Pipkin lists the many problems intrinsic to the cryptoart market, such as the ecological cost of mining and the lack of rights for artists. As I learned all the consequences related to buying cryptoart, I remembered an episode from season three of The Good Place. Spoiler alert ahead. If you haven’t seen The Good Place, it’s been, like, five years. Get on that. By season three, the Soul Squad has discovered the problem regarding the Good Place: no one can’t get into…
Copy!
In Kirby Ferguson’s video Everything is a Remix, he disproves common myths about the uniqueness of creativity. “Creativity isn’t magic. It happens by applying ordinary tools of thought to existing materials and the soil from which we grow our creations is something we scorn and misunderstand even though it gives us so much. And that’s copying” (14:12). According to Ferguson, copying is what the world refers to as a necessary evil. However, Ferguson takes a much more positive stance. “Put simply, copying is how we learn we can’t introduce anything new until we’re fluent in the language of our domain, and we do that through emulation. For instance, all artists spend their formative years producing derivative work” (14:30). Ferguson is stating that copying is how artists learn and grow. Many of my friends create art, ranging from digital drawings to musical composition. I decided to ask them what got them…
A Generation of Gamers
According to my siblings, babysitting meant sitting me down next to them on the couch as they played video games. I’d watch my brothers put a hundred hours into the latest Final Fantasy game (they each had their own memory card to keep their save files separate) and my sister crash into a hundred cars in Crazy Taxi. Looking back, I can’t believe my siblings got paid for babysitting when they literally did nothing. But I can’t say I minded their methods. I think seeing their love of video games sparked my own love for them. Although all my siblings loved video games, they didn’t play the same ones. My brothers preferred RPGs (Role-playing Games) with long story lines and turn-based battle systems while my sister preferred simulation games that required time management skills. My brothers read StarCraft II manuals as my sister plotted how to make as many guests…
Debating the Time Away
To be honest with you, I still don’t know what the digital humanities are. Okay, that’s sort of a lie. After reading four articles about the definition’s debate, I have a bit of an idea. It’s the humanities plus technology, definitely not technology plus the humanities. I think there’s also some building involved, or maybe it’s just screwing around. Long story short, if there’s a multiple-choice question on the midterm that asks, “Which of these projects is not considered part of the digital humanities?” I may not realize that a “medievalist with a website” is the right answer. (Please don’t add that to the test.) But does it matter that I don’t know a perfect definition for the digital humanities? Does being a part of the digital humanities require you to be able to publish an article establishing what you suppose to be the limits of the discipline? …
Leaving Home
I’m not from Dublin. I’m not from Ireland either. And according to my family history records, I don’t even have any Irish ancestors. Despite my lack of familial connection to Dublin, I related strongly to the main character’s dilemma in “Eveline” by James Joyce. Eveline stands at a crossroad in her life. At nineteen, she’s old enough to realize that she deserves happiness—a happiness that she will never find living at home in Dublin. She meets Frank, a sailor, and agrees to go away with him to Argentina. She writes her farewell letters, reminiscences in her old home, and firmly tells herself that she needs to escape. When she and Frank are finally ready to depart, Eveline becomes frozen. Even as Frank calls to her, she can’t let go of the railing. She can’t leave her home (as unhealthy and potentially unsafe it may be). As I…
