The End Begins

School starts again this week, and even though I have been watching the calendar for months it somehow still managed to suprise me yesterday when I realized that "Week at a Glance" was actually showing me that i had a class this week. One class to be exact, late in the day thursday, so I wont even have to think about waking up at eight or nine. It is a somewhat anti-climactic beginning to my last year as an undergraduate, to the point of being decieving.
The truth is that I'm trembling on the inside. The future, as always, is an amorphous cloud of possibilities; probabilities, with no real way of knowing where I might stand among the vast population of peers I am inheriting within the writing community. The question that plays itself most often in my mind is whether or not I will find the group or groups of those people who would accept me and the jumbles of words and phrases I have placed on the page.
This year also begins my first experiences in a leadership position, as the president of our undergraduate English club, which has, at best, five members who seem active. Though I feel up to the challenge there is no way of knowing whether or not the experience will end in a feeling of success. Be assured though, that regardless of my propensity toward whining I will come out of this smelling like a rose, because failure is not an option.
My goals are thus at this point: continue to write better everyday than the day before, continue writing, be published, get accepted into a good school with a teaching assistantship, bring EUSO to a point of stability, finish my thesis/book, not drive my professors crazy, get a minimum of a 3.75 GPA (currently sitting 3.71), and simply become a success in everything else that I hope to do in my life. Very simple, I am sure.

Din Presentations

the main theme i noticed today was that everyone wants to incorporate more of the visual aspect of the webpage asking for handwritten copies of works or to somehow create comics or panel works. I of course stick with my idea for a bomb-shelter Din but think that a lot of what we've been talking about today can be mixed in with this design. The fact that we're talking about an interactive space means that we can link works that are handwritten in a way that would still be organic to the overall theme of the shelter. A room for instance could sport several piles of paper that when interacted with uncrumple themselves to show handwritten works or a comic on a nightstand could come alive.
I heard the argument that we didn't want the website to outshine the work and while i agree with this to an extent i would still like us as a group to reach out as far as we can with this project and create the best site we possibly can. The fact is that we want people on this site. After that it's up to the work to speak for itself

grapes of wrath revisited

This seems more like a personal interest piece from a fan of Steinbeck's novel than a retelling of it. The media allows for viewers to see physical locations in a way that the original text could not but the end result is more of a documentary on the current condition of locations around the route than a retelling of the story itself. I would say then that this is a new work that investigates similar issues as the novel but is an entirely non-fiction doocumentation than a story.

Din thoughts

i felt like throwing something on my blog today for the fun of it.

i've been considering the different aspects of Din this morning. Some ideas brought up in class ascribed emotional value to this concept but there is more causing noise in this world than that. There are movements, fashion, living conditions to consider

"Din Apparel"
featuring works about plastic chains hanging from hips; mohawks and ponytails; prison stripe polos and torn panty-hose fashions

"The Colloquial Din" or "Din Vibrations"
playing the middle man and connecting all sides of the/an arguement


"Din living" or "The Din Den"
with a focus on family life, living conditions in the current age.


"Forest Din"
Nature

"A quiet Din"
serenity

"Political Din"
and Satan

the purpose of saying this isn't really to ask which one anyone wants to work with but to try relieving a little stress at the idea of trying to find a connecting factor for our pod rather to say that we have a versatile subject to work with here and that whatever we as a group decide is our interest/focus/concept (whatever) we will always have the ambiguity of language to back us.

Manifesto

My imaginary journal called The Unworldly Artist includes both visual and textual artworks with a focus on abstract and surreal works investigating or responding to the vast explosion of sub-cultures and materialism branching specifically across the United States.

I am interested in asking two questions "what if anything are our cultural norms in today's society" and "why do we need all this shit anyway"

This journal is interested in artists of all levels of experience but most specifically artists whose forms reach past the standard and known means of expression.