Aesthetics as Related to Fecundity of Blog?
Straw Poll/ Thinly Disguised Opinion:
a. our blog resembles pruitt-igoe//the failure of modernism
b. it feels aesthetically sparse, but i am most decidedly (edit: NOT) a minimalist
c. perhaps the barrenness of the white format is not conducive
to flowering discussion/ feelings of comfort & security.
d. remember what happened in the hallways & elevators of p-i?
e. can we add some sort of fetching photograph or clever sub-title?
(i. is this desired?
ii. jimmy-boy: is this even possible?)
f. huzzah for asking for discussion of admittedly unimportant issues!
Go! Go! Go!
a. our blog resembles pruitt-igoe//the failure of modernism
b. it feels aesthetically sparse, but i am most decidedly (edit: NOT) a minimalist
c. perhaps the barrenness of the white format is not conducive
to flowering discussion/ feelings of comfort & security.
d. remember what happened in the hallways & elevators of p-i?
e. can we add some sort of fetching photograph or clever sub-title?
(i. is this desired?
ii. jimmy-boy: is this even possible?)
f. huzzah for asking for discussion of admittedly unimportant issues!
Go! Go! Go!
posted by goodbye, goodbye at 2:06 PM
21 Comments:
Yes! We can and will upgrade the blog. I've just been lazy. Do you have any ideas in mind? If you can understand HTML and CSS, then I can give you access to the code and you can play around. I've been wanting to re-do the commenting system, but I haven't had the time. I want to make it more forum-y, like what Adam has in mind.
I've put up a sample banner. I'm not sure if it's what you had in mind, buuuut...I think we should rotate banners weekly or so. It's not hard to do.
If you want to contribute a banner, make an image that's about 370x50 pixels big, get it to me somehow (email?), and I'll put it up. Include a description if you want. :P
I knew a good bit of HTML coding, though the current state of applicability rests somewhere between "rusty" and "defunct."
And YES!
Weekly banner contests would bring about sufficient battles of wit, and what is Post-TASP TASP Society good for, if not the sharpening of (political/aesthetic/social/economic) wit?
Really, I just want to prove, at long last, to the Michigan blog and all of those other photographically-enchanced Former TASP Blogrings, that the unspeakable glory Michael-in-Drag can be the photographic symbol for all of (we/us?) noble Danforthians.
Post-Script:
Jimmy!
I cannot write effective, eloquent essays!
My blog comments are more lengthy & engaging than my two-page critical analyses!
Egad!
Post-Post-Script:
How about a Post-MBTA-Postmark-Day blog editing & aesthetic renovation party across the wires? Pleasepleaseplease?
Oh, and the design isn't finalized at all. We should probably play around with it more.
God Bless Ye, Mr. Jin,
that banner looks half vulgar!
But I wouldn't have Andrei/that damned frog any other way!!!
Oh dear!
I quite liked it!
Bring it back!
Yeah dude, let's do that. Totally.
I was referring to the renovation party. :P
Hurrah! We should also most definitely recruit the good Miss Rovang for this party, because her design-related skills and photo-editing glory are quite unrivaled!
(Did you happen to see her faux-"ARCH! ARCH! ARCH!" Postcards? Breakmyheartwithlaughter!)
SARAH! YOUR ROOMMATE HAS STILL NOT DECIDED ON A "PROBLEM" IN A LITERARY, AESTHETIC, SOCIAL, POLITICAL, PHILOSOPHICAL, OR SCIENTIFIC FIELD WORTHY OF 3-6 PAGES! SHE HAS A ROTTEN SOUL AND AN EVEN WORSE WORK ETHIC.
Honestly, though.
I shall write about the way that deadlines and assignments serve to quash creativity, and the way that qualitative tests of academic character invalidated romantic principles of spontaneity.
Bah. Or I'll write about laissez-faire.
Partyparty!
Dude, Adam the comment cross-linking is a good idea. It doesn't seem that complicated, either. We could give it a shot.
Adam: Hearty approval of your idea. See Michigan Blog's relatively simple but nonetheless immensely streamlined website "portal", which links blog to photographs to other assorted TASP-related repositories.
Again, I like the idea because it imposes a greater degree of order on our communications, but simultaneously provides far more opportunities for expression and discourse in different settings.
Jimmy/Adam, if you create such a thing, do be sure to put the photographs online, and to provide a "bin" for papers and essays and opinion pieces (or maybe weekly diatribes by some of us who want to sign up, along the lines of PubSpeaks, or perhaps following current affairs), because I was very much in favor of the idea that led to the "Brilliance Repository" (read, Adam: way to woo the prospective depositors!) and I don't think it got its fair shot to live.
And yes, Jimmy, your photographs are beautiful and surely deserve some representation in the annals of the intervoid, if of course, your artistic standards would not be violated.
I've a few other ideas, but I fear I should wait on them until after the MBTA and St. John's and other assorted scholarships are shuffled into the mailbox...
(Come on, February, stay around just a while longer!)
P.S.: I'm no techie, so Adam & Jimmy, go ahead and take on whatever manifestations of these schemes you will. I am alright with the scheming (ach--sometimes), but not so hep on the source tags.
Oh, Sarah-dear, everyone is afraid of finishing. Finishing is the most terrible part, especially when one comes to realize that nothing is ever finished, but realistic conditions just make things appear that way, and we are expected to respond in kind.
In all reality, I have two essays written which fit Essay No. Cinq's criterion, but I do not know how I feel about the ethical nature of using an essay not written specifically for the MBTA. Especially because I have so many, many things to write about.
And oh, dear, dear, I am so infinitely jealous of your glorious prose and the depths of your soul! I have found, in this long day (since 7am at a computer! What a vrai Luddite I am!), that I have no soul to speak of, and definitely no depths worth scraping, so I feel that I've been articulating hoo-hah pulled from the boysenberry bushes of dumb, impersonal logic, and that there is not one single seed of Jessi contained in the essays, let alone any of the epiphanies which seem to haunt the writings of which I am rather proud.
I never know how to moderate the fact that these writings will be read by other people with the fact that I want them to represent my own soul as some big sample of prose and poetry and passion. I think that the latter is always better, for why compromise oneself? Especially in a democracy (until, of course, all opinions have been weighed, and the real battle begins)? But, again, I've come across like a robot, all rhetoric and vagaries, so I fear that my chances at the Telluride House may be slim...
But still, I am hoping that the four of us will end up all in a row! Maybe my glowing review of Eliot from the TASP Applications will outweigh the un-quality of my "I would like to be an educator" and "Folk music is a form of American vernacular artwork" blah-de-blah that this Sunday has produced...
BIG, EXISTENTIAL
ELEVATOR SIGH!
But ah, this feels like TASP, doesn't it quite truly?
I know that you shall do beautifully, and I would dearly love to read the sum product of your exploits, so may I suggest an essay reading exchange sometime after we mail everything out! Unless, of course, you are hankering to edit my soulless prose to-night in attempts to augment our chances of being roommates-once-more...
!!!
EXCERPT for the sake
of public mockery:
The only vision of democracy to work without the instance of some sort of body-in-the-cogs is an absolutely homogenous one, and the difficulty in creating a true self-governing community comes in erecting the bastions of democratic living necessary for an methodological common ground, but leaving room for the most blatant forms of ideological discord.
And I used to have a soul!
Missing You,
The Left Bank.
Post-Script: Ohohoh! Your list is absolutely astounding! I, on the other hand, have scrolled through no fewer than eleven compact discs in the last twelve hours, and have consumed, in a twenty hour period, something like five pieces of varying cakes (some cheesecake), two cinnamon rolls, several pastries, some fruit, several pieces of frosted bread, and some baked eggplant. And, as it may go without saying, I have blogged some.
Lovelovelove to you!
I second Lee West!
A tracker, Jimmy, a tracker! Let TASP control our lives and augment our otherwise decentralized patterns of procrastination more than it already does!
(Really, it is only the guilt talking: Columbus, Ohio, once appeared at the top of the U.Mich blog's tracker, and I blushed quite readily and vowed not to click the link with such earnestness in the future, lest I betray my St. Louis allegiance!)
And onwards, towards complete and subtle control of all of our souls by the fearsome power of the Association.
And...a few more paragraphs to go, and Essay No. 4 est fini!
Mr. Higuera, you have always been something of an iconoclast. I praise the Shipmans quite mightily for their impossible generosity, but I still find it harrowing that I would not be capable of writing a measely five essays in the space of seven or eight months (reduced to one evening). I should, by all accounts, be capable of this level of analytic reasoning, with stunning eloquence to boot, and if I cannot do it, then the Telluride House, assuredly, is quite right in choosing someone better qualified!
Knowing the caliber of the application readers does little to dissuade the fear of essay-writing, for the type of high-falutin' I-love-ideas bull-shite which may be a bit unsubstantiated but would tug jaws to dropping elsewhere shall surely engender massive amounts of critical fire from the Housemembers. However, the self-same fact also grants this entire process a small and glowing flame, because our writings & otherwise inchoate scholastic ramblings will be presented in a forum where they will be understood, and criticized!
And, like Kepler said...
"The harshest criticism of one single understanding man means more to me than all the applause of the great masses."
That man knew more than stars.
Now, let us all follow in the path of E.M. Forster--
two cheers for democracy!
(I wonder, then--is three the optimal number of cheers?)
Sarah--
Procrastination & nostalgic revelry continue to mount! I rushed upstairs, grabbed the pile of discs that has not been disturbed since my mournful return from Danforth, and have before me a scratched and much-loved pile befitting to all Association-related glory. Commence the heartbreak!
1. Sufjan--"Illinoise"
2. Sufjan--"Michigan" (the first evening? listening to redford? the creaking chair in the song? ohohoh! new connotations brought about by prospects of house life? yesyesyes!)
3. Sufjan--"Seven Swans" (Bojun in the MO Historical Society threshold: "Jessi, I didn't know that you listened to Christian rock!")
4. Les Shins, old staple!
5. THE ESSENTIAL SIMON & GARFUNKEL, DISC 2 (for all of those long walks to the ever-changing Hall of Architecture)...
Given that all of our non-paper-writing and Clay-campaigning and gossiping time was spent singing along, I thought that you would want to know.
Sobs and Giggles,
Jessi
Heeeeey--
I've got nothing to do to-day but smile!
HALF OF THE TIME WE'RE GONE,
But we don't know where,
we don't know where!
(Suddenly, I am in the mini-van speeding away from Danforth for the second time, and it is that strange interval before the start of school, and the world feels like it was finally realized and sealed away, and then vanished into some thousand tiny fragments...Life, Life!
And I don't want to finish, either!)
Eternally,
Mrs. Robinson
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Hold the anger, Mr. Jennings!
I didn't choose that fetching-though-slightly-pornographic banner photo!
'Twas that boy out in Washington State, I swear it!
And, as to my pot-smoking fundamentalism and shameless adherence to the higher aesthetic standards exercised by our Friends from Michigan (we are, after all, a more analytic bunch)--
what more could you expect?
Of course I am a conformist!
All High Irony aside,
I hope that you and Sarah have a lovely time in Ivins!
I expect a telephone interrogation on the hour, heart-wrenching stories of love, lust and heartbreak on the Utah plains/ New Mexican mesas, etc...
Love,
Your Knee-Jerk Botanist
And SPEAKING OF PORNOGRAPHY, whatever happened to the Young Mr. Stetsenko? I dearly miss his fearsome wit and CAPITAL LETTERS!
Also, something that a very nasty philosophy professor once taught me:
It is important, when making decisions or having arguments, to remember that
IDEAS ARE NOT PEOPLE.
Keeping this in mind has served me well in many cases, and keeping it in mind more often would have prevented strife in other situations...
Or, perhaps more appropriately, people are not wholly their ideas.
This understanding seems to allow for a more productive forum for discussion, since the concern can be over Truth and viability of ideas instead of clashes of personality.
(Case in Point: If Michigan's blog employs techniques of web-based cohesiveness that would nicely serve the purposes that we outline for our own online representation, we should feel free to implement them, with due credit to the "musikers" so being so damned innovative, without worrying about the connotations on an intepersonal/intergroup level.)
IT DOES WHAT IT WANTS.
And without the superimposition of any type of moral compass, too!
Dear Andrei, you have returned, just in time to praise your own self-image!
Still a bit too racy for me and my 80-plus full-bodied apron set, but the youth will have their debauchery...
How goes the life in Florida?
I am writing you a letter.
It has been announced.
I cannot hold you to a reply, but I can, however, hold myself to the daunting act of en-voy-er.
I think that Adam, Amy, and myself would make (far too) good (of) use of individualized blogsections. Jimmy, too, for his photographs, and Michael, for random measurements of things in kilometric distances that none of the rest of us can understand! And Nisha, too, for those spontaneous-yet-ritualistic assurances that New Jersey, despite popular conception, still does exist.
Adam, we really must engage in some sort of a topical crossfire, if not just for the purposes of development of wit and argumentative skill, then to glean out "objective truths." Because I'm all about objective truths.
However, I think that serious rifts in conceptual, argumentative & procedural approaches (e.g. Jessi-the-Subjective-Humanist-Loves-Self-Serving-Blogposts, while Adam prefers...red meat?) might wear away any intial cutesiness or cult appeal that the idea might carry.
Regardless, I like it.
Imagine it! The true democratic synthesis of the Nunnian vision! We could initiate a new forum of intellectual activity along the lines of PubSpeaks, in which two individuals from assuredly different cultural & intellectual disciplines would present their lengthy diatribes and empassioned appeals...
That said, I'll pry my tongue from my cheek and put it back where it belongs.
It is a very dangerous habit to assume a boisterous public persona when one is avoiding the soul-searching necessary to write effective & eloquent personal prose!
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