Soliloquy - by Hamlet's Cat

To go outside, and there perchance to stay
Or to remain within: that is the question:
Whether 'tis better for a cat to suffer
The cuffs and buffets of inclement weather
That Nature rains upon those who roam abroad,
Or take a nap upon a scrap of carpet,
And so by dozing melt the solid hours
That clog the clock's bright gears with sullen time
And stall the dinner bell.
To sit, to stare Outdoors, and by a stare to seem to state
A wish to venture forth without delay,
Then when the portal's opened up, to stand
As if transfixed by doubt.
To prowl; to sleep;
To choose not knowing when we may once more
Our readmittance gain: aye, there's the hairball;
For if a paw were shaped to turn a knob,
Or work a lock or slip a window-catch,
And going out and coming in were made
As simple as the breaking of a bowl,
What cat would bear the household's petty plagues,
The cook's well-practiced kicks, the butler's broom,
The infant's careless pokes, the tickled ears,
The trampled tail, and all the daily shocks
That fur is heir to, when, of his own free will,
He might his exodus or entrance make
With a mere mitten?
Who would spaniels fear,
Or strays trespassing from a neighbor's yard,
But that the dread of our unheeded cries
And scratches at a barricaded door
No claw can open up, dispels our nerve
And makes us rather bear our humans' faults
Than run away to unguessed miseries?
Thus caution doth make house cats of us all;
And thus the bristling hair of resolution
Is softened up with the pale brush of thought,
And since our choices hinge on weighty things,
We pause upon the threshold of decision.

~Shakespaw~

I can understand Hamlet's Cat's difficulty in deciding whether to go or not to go. I, for one, would like to stay home given that we've been hit by yet another spring storm of wet, slushy, cold and heavy snow. My neighbor tells me she hasn't seen a winter this long, cold and wet since '95. While I'm used to long and cold, I definitely don't like the wet! (I suspect Hamlet's cat wouldn't care for it either)

Maybe not on the same page, but at least reading the same book

Met with my supervisor today. She was happy with my reading list though she wants me to trim it (a few suggestions on what to trim, but pretty much up to me). Overall, I feel happy about the meeting - there have been a few times in the past when we met and I thought we were actually having two different conversations, but today, we were on the same page (mostly).

So, now I have several things to do:

• I have to go through the list of texts that I have and rearrange them under the new categories we discussed (this is where trimming should happen)
• Then I have to split those lists into primary and secondary novels
• Next I need to read them (okay, well, at least the ones I haven't yet read)
• After that, I need to find books on: contemporary British history/culture; criticism about representations of historical material in fiction; postmodernism; and postcolonialism *whew!*
• Then I have to give her another list.

That's all.

The other good news/bad news element (depending on whether I can pull it off) is that she is satisfied with my projected timetable for writing the exams, though I couldn't pin her down on a deadline date for submission of that second list in order to write the exam when I want to. Oh well, I suppose I can chalk it up as a successful meeting even if I didn't get that.

Oh, yeah, and she indicated I should audit a class that our new professor of Twentieth Century literature will teach when he arrives this fall. And that he will likely lead the dissertation committee. Those were two questions that I had about how his hire will impact my studies. His specialization in Irish lit, so we don't have much overlap, but his degree is officially listed as cultural studies, so he'll be a good resource for methodology more than primary textual analysis.

Perhaps I should celebrate...

Howling shivering nighttime

Wow! Is that wind outside every howling and rattling the windows. I've had to turn the thermostat up an extra degree just to keep up with the drafts coming in from what feels like every chink of the masonry.

Ugh! I sure hope it's nicer outside tomorrow - the bus will be even more unpleasant than its usual smelly, unreliable, overcrowded condition.

It's really just about the picture

You scored as Adult. The Adult ego state is the part of the personality that is most in tune with reality as it gathers information and makes decisions based on the reality of facts. People who score high in this category spend a lot of time thinking, computing and analyzing. Adult 70% Nurturing Parent 67% Adapted Child 53% Controlling Parent 30% Natural Child 30% Interaction with Others Survey created with QuizFarm.com

I suppose it's good that I scored as adult (since I've been one chronologically-speaking for years) but I really just like the picture that accompanies the description.

It reminds me of this one from our trip to London (outside British Museum):

Have you ever wondered...

... why laptop bodies are usually black and desktop ones beige?

Shock of recognition

I log onto the weather page to check out the weather and what is the featured picture at the top of the screen - only beautiful Calgary!



The images are entirely random, and if I were to refresh the page, I'd get a new one, so you can imagine how shocked I was to glance at the photo and realize it was Calgary! Looks fabulous! (though if you're one of the people living there who reads this, you know how fabulous it is...)

Some things never change

I am making this statement as an act of willful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those how have the power to end it. I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe this War, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow-soldiers entered upon this War should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible for them to be changed without our knowledge, and that, has this been done, the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.

I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolonging those sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust.

I am not protesting against the military conduct of the War, but against the political errors and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.

On behalf of those who are suffering now, I make this protest against the deception which is being practiced on them. Also I believe that it may help to destroy the callous complacence with which the majority of those as home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share, and which they have not sufficient imagination to realise.

Written by Sigfried Sassoon and read to the House of Commons, July 30, 1917


By putting my weapon down, I chose to reassert myself as a human being. I have not deserted the military nor been disloyal to the men and women of the military. I have not been disloyal to a country. I have only been loyal to my principles.

When I turned myself in, with all my fears and doubts, it did it not only for myself. I did it for the people of Iraq, even for those who fired upon me – they were just on the other side of a battleground where war itself was the only enemy. I did it for the Iraqi children, who are victims of mines and depleted uranium. I did it for the thousands of unknown civilians killed in war. My time in prison is a small price compared to the price Iraqis and Americans have paid with their lives. Mine is a small price compared to the price humanity has paid for war.

To those who have called me a coward I say that they are wrong, and that without knowing it, they are also right. They are wrong when they think that I left the war for fear of being killed. I admit that fear was there, but there was also the fear of killing innocent people, the fear of putting myself in a position where to survive means to kill, there was the fear of losing my soul in the process of saving my body, the fear of losing myself to my daughter, to the people who love me, to the man I used to be, the man I wanted to be. I was afraid of waking up one morning to realize my humanity had abandoned me.
I say without any pride that I did my job as a soldier. I commanded an infantry squad in combat and we never failed to accomplish our mission. But those who called me a coward, without knowing it, are also right. I was a coward not for leaving the war, but for having been a part of it in the first place. Refusing and resisting this war was my moral duty, a moral duty that called me to take a principled action. I failed to fulfill my moral duty as a human being and instead I chose to fulfill my duty as a soldier. All because I was afraid. I was terrified; I did not want to stand up to the government and the army – I was afraid of punishment and humiliation. I went to war because at the moment I was a coward, and for that I apologize to my soldiers for not being the type of leader I should have been.

Written by Camilo Mejia, February 28, 2005 at Full article at Alternet

It's amazing how these two statements resonate with each other. Although they don't sound the same, and they aren't directed at military engagements that remotely resemble each other, they express a similar sentiment. Sometimes I think it's very easy to forget that human beings are the ones who fight wars AND are the ones who decide to start wars. Regardless of how it starts, the damage to those human beings remains the same.

Why do we do this to ourselves?

My fingers aren't working

I can't seem to type straight. My fingers feel like insensitive lumps of flesh at the end of my hand and they can't seem to translate what I am thinking into words on a page. They feel numb and fat. I keep having to go back and correct words that I've mis-typed and I'm feeling very frustrated by it.

I thought maybe I needed to limber them up, get them moving, get the blood flowing, and that would solve the problem. So I went down to the piano, thinking a half hour of playing would help.

I pulled out the bench.

It fell apart in my hands.

By the time I fixed it, I was even more frustrated, but tried to play anyway.

Didn't work. Can't type... can't play piano either.

This is going to be a very long day.

Perhaps I worry too much

In the neverending saga of the comprehensive exams - will it ever end? - I might have to rethink my schedule yet again. Last summer, I had hoped I would be ready to write by the end of this year. Then around Christmas I revised that to fall next year.

Now I'm scared it might be even later than next fall. I'm trying to figure out how Dwayne's schedule is going to impact mine. He was hoping for the summer externship slot, but instead got the fall one: Oct-Dec. It's out in Holyoke, which is about an hour and a half west of here. A long commute, so we're thinking he would go out Monday, come back Friday (there's an apartment available for the students).

So, you can guess why I'm wondering if fall is the best time for me to write. During the week, I'll be playing the single parent game again - not as hard as it would be with little kids, after all, I mostly need to make sure they eat (healthy) food and go to bed before midnight - but I still will be the only one around to field questions, dole out money, mediate endless arguments about who took who's shirt/shoes/keys, help with homework, give permission to go places etc.

And then when Dwayne comes home on the weekend, I'll want to spend time with him, so it'll be difficult to keep to a study schedule then.

Not to mention how weird it will feel to sleep alone.

Or that I'll be vehicle-less during the week.

Or that I'll just plain miss him.

I know it's a great opportunity for him (the Holyoke clinic is trés up-to-date technologically), but I can't help but feel that writing my exams under such conditions is going to just be harder than it would be otherwise.

But maybe I just worry too much - after all, I might want to write in fall, but that doesn't mean my committee will agree with me that I'm ready by then. After all, I don't even have any reading lists approved yet... unlike SOME people!

Constantine

...and then he pulled out the sacred brass knuckles...

This game has 240 hours...

When you can't get hockey on a regular basis, I guess the next best thing is to get an awful lot of it.

Which is it?

I just spent 6 hours putting together documents for a scholarship application.

Was this:
a) time well spent?
or
b) a colossal waste of time?

I suppose the answer will depend on whether I get the scholarship or not (don't hold you're breath, it's a bit of a long shot)

Wow! Did I understimate that or what?!

While looking for something else, I came across this entry where I write: "I also got a few things straightened out about next year's comprehensive exam proposals (3), but I still have to meet with at least four more people (hopefully no more than that) before I can even think about beginning to read up on the areas before writing the proposals."

Proposals? I was talking proposals back in March?

I SO did not understand what I was getting into - I haven't even started thinking about proposals... I haven't even figured out primary reading lists yet, let alone secondary ones or rationale for a proposal!

Dammit! This process is taking WAY too long! And I'm not getting any younger!

Updating

I've been working to update my Books list - I've got all but one book (that I've finished that is) now listed in case you're interested.

My favorite recent quote? It's from Fire and Ice: “…we Canadians sometimes find our neighbours baffling. Between their rhetoric and our own (the left’s admonitions about the dangers of convergence with the gun-toting free marketers to the south, the right’s insistence that we shed our outdated national differences like garments on a long-awaited wedding night and join our industrious, innovative Yankee friends in an orgy of free trade and economic growth), Americans are reflected in so many funhouse mirrors that it would be remarkable if we saw them, collectively, as anything other than caricatures” (20).

Living here does however help smash some of those funhouse mirrors.

Sharing is caring

...and cleanliness is next to godliness... blah, blah, blah

Posts have been/will be sparse for the next little while. D and I have to share a computer now because his went kaput on the weekend and with the amount we both use a computer, this one's getting a workout! So blogging is low on my list of stuff-I-need-to-do-when-I-have-the-computer.

In the meantime, in the interest of updating the aphorism in this blog post title, I give you a twenty-first century list of aphorisms:

Home is where you hang your @.
The email of the species is more deadly than the mail.
A journey of a thousand sites begins with a single click.
You can't teach a new mouse old clicks.
Don't put all your hypes in one home page.
Pentium wise; pen and paper foolish.
The modem is the message.
Too many clicks spoil the browse.
The geek shall inherit the earth.
A chat has nine lives.
Don't byte off more than you can view.
Fax is stranger than fiction.
What boots up must come down.
Windows will never cease.
Virtual reality is its own reward.
Modulation in all things.
A user and his leisure time are soon parted.
There's no place like http://www.home.com
Oh, what a tangled website we weave when first we practice.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to surf the Net, and he won't bother you for months on end.

Courtesy the nice people over at River Deep. (It you're trying to figure out the oh-so-twentieth-century versions these came from, check out their page)

Happy Valentine's Day!

Cartoons & Poetry

Plopping yourself in from of the television and watching cartoons for hours and hours until your mind is numb is a long established Saturday tradition in childhood.

I just walked past the tv where a cartoon character is discussing poetic form in William Blake.

I don't ever remember the Roadrunner or Bug Bunny discussing art, do you?

Implicit patriotism?

I have noticed over the last two years that when people ask where we will go when we are finished school, the Americans assume we will remain in America and the Canadians assume we will return to Canada.

I, however, assume we will go where ever we can find jobs!

Playing Games

Weird coincidence today.

Bookmarked a chapter on "Games as Narrative Play" in a textbook that I want to read before I return it to the library later this week.

But while taking a break, see this article about how video games shouldn't include narrative pieces, or "cutscenes".

In the article, Thompson guesses at why games are incorporating more and longer cutscenes: These Hollywood flourishes are good for dazzling mainstream journalists and pundits. That's because there's still a weird anxiety about adults playing games. Most people still think that video games are sophomoric kid stuff; the ones that have a narrative and emulate the movies seem more serious and, well, mature.

But movie watching (especially obsessive movie watching) is still the province of the young. That's why there are so many annoying teen movies out there... and why the scripts of so many other (potentially) good movies are riddled with easy answers, implausibly happy endings, and other story killers. But I digress.

Thompson explains his objection to cutscenes as one arising directly out of their narrativity, something he implies is antithetical to the pleasure of gaming itself: Playing a game, any kind of game, is inherently open-ended and interactive. Whether you're playing chess, Go, or Super Mario Bros., you don't really know how things will wind up or what will happen along the way. Narrative, on the other hand, is neither open-ended nor interactive. When you're watching a story, you surrender masochistically to the storyteller. The fun is in not having control, in sitting still and going "Yeah? And then what happened? And then?"
That's why cut scenes are such a massive pain in the neck—they enforce passivity. There's nothing more annoying than going on a shooting spree, then having to break the rhythm of play by putting your game pad down for minutes at a time.

He does have a point. Cutscenes do require the player to sit back and stop bashing at the buttons for a few moments. But sometimes that respite is necessary. In their discussion of games, the authors of Rules of Play propose some rationales for including cutscenes: surveillance or planning tool (provide information about upcoming events), game play catapult (where the cut scene explains, or hints at the upcoming action), scene and mood setting (introducing changes to scene or increases in a particular mood as the game progresses), choice and consequence (increases 'real life' feel), rhythm and pacing (rest from intense action), and player reward (visual delight or punishment) (Salen and Zimmerman).

What Thompson is complaining about (at least in GTA San Andreas) is the last, the enforced pause in play that interrupts intense action. This complaint addresses the difference in styles of play and desire for cutscenes between novice and experienced players that Salen and Zimmerman recognize. Experienced players have built up such a familiarity with the conventions of game playing (as Thompson says, there are few 'new' games), that they do not require planning, scene setting, a break from play or a cutscene as reward for successful play. Novice players do enjoy them.

The cutscenes were the parts that I was most fascinated by with The Getaway in part simply because they were cinematic, and I found it interesting to note how my play during the active parts of the game coincided or clashed with the cutscene. Often what I was experiencing during play had very little to do with the narrative of the game, but by structuring the game around the narrative, there was a unity to the play that transcended the repetitive nature of the game. I might be shooting people and driving while playing the game, but there was a reason why I was shooting at them (or chasing them). My 'motivation' for shooting and driving within the game is not simply to complete a level and ultimately win the game, but my character in the game is shooting and chasing these people because they've wronged him. So my player motivation (getting to the next level) is reinforced by my character's motivation (to avenge himself).

I would think that this kind of narrative support for player action inherent in the creation of cutscenes would actually enhance the gaming experience because you would be playing similar games for different reasons (at least according to why your character is doing what he/she is doing). Theoretically, wouldn't the presence of narrative accentuate the uniqueness of each game within a particular genre by providing a different motivation?

But I'm a novice gamer (very novice!), so perhaps there is some part of my argument that is missing because I lack the experience to see it. Thoughts?

Good weekend

Well, it's not over yet, but I think it's fair to say this has been a pretty good weekend. I am trying to get a lot of work done today (hence giving up on invitations to Superbowl parties), but getting a lot done will feel good too.

Yesterday was fun - spent the afternoon with good friends and the evening with my family. Ate way too much. Drank not too much. Just a really, comfortable, happy, good time. (Much, much better than last year's birtday - in fact, I kept this year pretty low key mostly because I was paranoid that my plans would all fall apart again this year - part of my satisfaction with the day was that they didn't.)

Today, much work. It seems the more I accomplish, the more I think I still need to do. Will it ever end? Something similar to what's going on here with Cecilia keeps me coming back to the work though... time's winged chariot and all that.

Odd theme developed in my gift receiving however: received four movies: Quills, Identity, The Secret Window, and Eddie Izzard's Unrepeatable. First one: crazy guy. Second one: crazy people. Third one: Crazy guy. Fourth one: (up till a few decades ago, the DSM III would've labelled) crazy guy.

Meaning?

Maybe I don't want to know!