Style right out of a J. Crew catalog; a clear face and excited teeth
the tiny bit of hair right before each ear is like a prequel to yr jawline.
I imagine that underneath yr bed is full of boxes--
disposable camera sleeves of high school memories,
layered between ticket stubs, and nostalgia.
You see things beautifully, delicately
like each freckle across yr nose.
Wearing yr heart on yr
pinky finger as a modern romantic.
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
Skateboarder Ross Capicchioni-shot multiple times with a shotgun and survives
I know this is late and this isn't part of my blog portfolio, but the way this kid tells this story is so amazing that I had to post it.
watch part 1 here
watch part 2 here
I wouldn't have this story told any other way. Videography and skateboarding go hand in hand, so if it were a typed out article, it would feel contrived or sell out-ish, which is something skateboarders try so hard to avoid. The way that different film strips of Detroit, skateboarding, and still images break up the narrative don't take away from Ross's story at all. I feel that's it's equivalent to an image within a block of text. The way that film accentuates this story is so representative of the skateboarding lifestyle and without it, it would fall short.
Favorite Blogs
Paul- vegan straight edge lifestyle
Tommy- vegan straight edge life style
Tyler Knott-creative writing and photography
The Informed Vegan-vegan lifestyle
Tommy- vegan straight edge life style
Tyler Knott-creative writing and photography
The Informed Vegan-vegan lifestyle
LOST
"Lie to them, Jack. If you do it half as well as you lie to yourself, they'll believe you.”
-John Locke
Your dog in his shrunken sweater,
buries into my hair when we kiss.
A type of jealousy I can relate to.
I know you’re getting tired of watching
what happens between Desmond and Penny
because it’s breaking my heart.
My new apartment
doesn’t allow pets,
so we can be alone
after long nights of standing
in chilly houses
waiting for hours
to hear your friend’s band.
I’ll always cook when you’re hungry
but I can’t promise that I won’t fuck up
the pancakes or have much to say.
I will no longer feel self conscious about
the bras hanging off my bed posts
because your Ikea bedframe is broken, doesn’t have any--
You will be familiar with the black
and nude lace.
It shouldn’t be this hard to feel particular.
Tonight I hate most everything
About your one-word answers,
how I’m left to think about
love.
There is one thing I’ve actually never told you.
-John Locke
Your dog in his shrunken sweater,
buries into my hair when we kiss.
A type of jealousy I can relate to.
I know you’re getting tired of watching
what happens between Desmond and Penny
because it’s breaking my heart.
My new apartment
doesn’t allow pets,
so we can be alone
after long nights of standing
in chilly houses
waiting for hours
to hear your friend’s band.
I’ll always cook when you’re hungry
but I can’t promise that I won’t fuck up
the pancakes or have much to say.
I will no longer feel self conscious about
the bras hanging off my bed posts
because your Ikea bedframe is broken, doesn’t have any--
You will be familiar with the black
and nude lace.
It shouldn’t be this hard to feel particular.
Tonight I hate most everything
About your one-word answers,
how I’m left to think about
love.
There is one thing I’ve actually never told you.
Interviewing Carlos Miller
I interviewed Carlos Miller via Facebook a couple weeks back for an assignment for my internship. This dude is big, muscly, and tan but he is also one of the forerunners in the photographer's rights movement. As a photographer myself, knowing your rights to photograph public property is extremely important. Cops often make up their own rules or harass people with cameras when they are free to take pictures of things like subway systems, car accidents, and police officers themselves. Miller writes non-fiction articles about different injustices to photojournalists and videographers because he himself was arrested twice for photographing police and he won both cases against the police without a lawyer. That is how integrated digital media, public property, and the first amendment all are. It's so important to be aware of your rights especially if you plan on taking pictures or video of any of the occupy protests. Even the activists have turned ugly against media journalists. There are countless videos of harmless photographer's being harassed, attacked, and threatened by the "peaceful" sit-inners. As long as it's a public space, you can shoot whatever you'd like (with a camera of course, not a gun) and as Carlos Miller coined, "Photography is not a crime".
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
BELIEVE IN FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION?
SUBMIT YOUR STATEMENTS HERE
Send your photos to info@sampsoniaway.org with a quote about what freedom of expression means to you. We have an important privilege here, use it to tell our readers of Sampsonia Way how you feel.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Byliner.com
I followed three different writers on Byliner.com, Chuck Klosterman, Colson Whitehead, and W.C. Heinz
I feel that especially Chuck and Colson are dissimilar from one another. One often writes about sport-like events, more urgent and political issues, and Chuck writes about music, bands, and subculture, three topics I'm particularly interested in. Heinz wrote "Death of a Racehorse" which I found extremely moving. I cried while reading it. Neither Chuck nor Colson will probably evoke tears from me while I'm reading their work, most likely because of their biting sarcasm and wit. Each writer possess something that the others don't. Chuck is extremely self-aware within his writing, as well as Colson, but he doesn't focus on himself as much as Chuck does. They both are aware of themselves within their works, just in different ways. Heinz doesn't include any moments of inner speculation and the way Colson may write about a sport, or Klosterman may write about a sport is completely different than how Heinz writes about sports. It's less about sports are more about the emotion and anxiety in that sport. Chuck depicts emotions very bluntly, while Colson is slightly more poetic about it. If there was a scale on the poeticality of each of these writers, it would be on a scale from most poetic to "least" poetic starting with Heinz, then Colson, and finally Chuck. All of their techniques are effective depending on their subject matter and these techniques give way to their individual styles as writers. All in all, I'm saying that the same technique can be used by three writers, but each writer may be on a different spectrum than another. It's interested to see how all writers are aiming to evoke emotions from an audience, but the unique ways they go about utilizing their craft to do so.
I feel that especially Chuck and Colson are dissimilar from one another. One often writes about sport-like events, more urgent and political issues, and Chuck writes about music, bands, and subculture, three topics I'm particularly interested in. Heinz wrote "Death of a Racehorse" which I found extremely moving. I cried while reading it. Neither Chuck nor Colson will probably evoke tears from me while I'm reading their work, most likely because of their biting sarcasm and wit. Each writer possess something that the others don't. Chuck is extremely self-aware within his writing, as well as Colson, but he doesn't focus on himself as much as Chuck does. They both are aware of themselves within their works, just in different ways. Heinz doesn't include any moments of inner speculation and the way Colson may write about a sport, or Klosterman may write about a sport is completely different than how Heinz writes about sports. It's less about sports are more about the emotion and anxiety in that sport. Chuck depicts emotions very bluntly, while Colson is slightly more poetic about it. If there was a scale on the poeticality of each of these writers, it would be on a scale from most poetic to "least" poetic starting with Heinz, then Colson, and finally Chuck. All of their techniques are effective depending on their subject matter and these techniques give way to their individual styles as writers. All in all, I'm saying that the same technique can be used by three writers, but each writer may be on a different spectrum than another. It's interested to see how all writers are aiming to evoke emotions from an audience, but the unique ways they go about utilizing their craft to do so.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Lab: How to describe an observation of people at a casino in three different methods
Think of three different ways—other than print—to tell a story. (We’ll assume that your piece has a print component.) Give a descriptive one-paragraph summary for each. Post idea by the end of class.
1. Video or time lapse photography:
I feel that River's casino doesn't allow photography inside its walls, but if it was allowed, this could be an interested method to document the progression of a night in the casino. All of these methods take on a voyeuristic approach, an observer in a strange environment. There could be a camera placed at once table throughout the night to document the kinds of winning and losing that go on there. This footage could then be placed to music and played as a video with captions or subtitles throughout to give the story more background. In this method there would be no spoken word over the film, but just quick easy statistics that wouldn't distract the viewer from the images.
2. Cartoon:
A minimalist cartoon of the people at a casino or progression of time spent at a casino or diagram of the casino. All three could be incorporated together to create an illustrative and factual dynamic to the text of the piece. Observations would be easy to illustrate because all you'd have to do is sit and draw in the space. A progressive way to use a diagram to annotate the space would be to annotate assumptions and first impressions of the space and then take the same illustration and annotate it again once you learned the facts of the space. This could be a light hearted approach to the topic and give it a humorous element.
3. What is left behind:
Telling a story by what is left behind is something that we've done for hundreds of years. Archeologists look at remains to piece together a story about remnants of a community that have been buried for centuries. Doing this in a public space would be non-invasive and you could use garbage, or what people litter and leave behind at places they've once been sitting, to create some kind of narrative about this person or people. Although it would put pressure on obtaining the facts of the story, but it could be an interesting element to the story, stand as a cultural snippet of the city, as well as the behaviors of that person. Certain trash could say something about what that person was eating, how much that food cost, if they were celebrating or playing it safe, or if they drinking, why, etc. There could be tons of information pulled from these remnants that could be verified or grounded into the story with other facts and details.
1. Video or time lapse photography:
I feel that River's casino doesn't allow photography inside its walls, but if it was allowed, this could be an interested method to document the progression of a night in the casino. All of these methods take on a voyeuristic approach, an observer in a strange environment. There could be a camera placed at once table throughout the night to document the kinds of winning and losing that go on there. This footage could then be placed to music and played as a video with captions or subtitles throughout to give the story more background. In this method there would be no spoken word over the film, but just quick easy statistics that wouldn't distract the viewer from the images.
2. Cartoon:
A minimalist cartoon of the people at a casino or progression of time spent at a casino or diagram of the casino. All three could be incorporated together to create an illustrative and factual dynamic to the text of the piece. Observations would be easy to illustrate because all you'd have to do is sit and draw in the space. A progressive way to use a diagram to annotate the space would be to annotate assumptions and first impressions of the space and then take the same illustration and annotate it again once you learned the facts of the space. This could be a light hearted approach to the topic and give it a humorous element.
3. What is left behind:
Telling a story by what is left behind is something that we've done for hundreds of years. Archeologists look at remains to piece together a story about remnants of a community that have been buried for centuries. Doing this in a public space would be non-invasive and you could use garbage, or what people litter and leave behind at places they've once been sitting, to create some kind of narrative about this person or people. Although it would put pressure on obtaining the facts of the story, but it could be an interesting element to the story, stand as a cultural snippet of the city, as well as the behaviors of that person. Certain trash could say something about what that person was eating, how much that food cost, if they were celebrating or playing it safe, or if they drinking, why, etc. There could be tons of information pulled from these remnants that could be verified or grounded into the story with other facts and details.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Lab 3-48 Hour Magazine Idea
Topic:
The River’s Casino
Mainly personal stories with facts sprinkled in for solidity/humor
Online Magazine for video snippets
We’d cover our 48-hour magazine during the weekend of one of the Peirogi eating contests
Length:
Use tumblr as our format to keep updating after our 48 hour deadline
Articles:
1. Gambling Problems/Addiction
2. Seafood Buffet/Free Drinks (pop)
3. Entertainers-Journey Cover Bands
4. Winning and Losing stories/Range of Emotions
5. People, NRA convention-Time Lapse of a certain table/machine
-Convention Center events that draw in crowds to the casino
-How the people in Pittsburgh see the casino vs. other cities in US (Vegas and Atlantic City dress up)
6. Slot Machines, different types, penny machines (kitty glitter-a cat themed slot machine)
7. How to get banned from a casino: Using a fake ID
8. Policy on counting cards: could be a how to illustrative guide, how to play the games, count cards, etc
9. Employee’s outfits and funny stories
10. Card members and Player’s Club (bios on people who have these)
11. Dealer School- story about how to become a card dealer
12. Pro Poker players, any famous people from Pittsburgh seen there?
13. Recent Jackpot Winners!
14. How bad of an idea having a casino credit line is
Art wise:
Photography
Illustrations, cartoons, diagrams, labeled parts
Videos (time lapse and short interviews)
Stats: Short blurbs/side bars/cartoons
About money dropped
How much the employee’s make
How many people go there
The River’s Casino
Mainly personal stories with facts sprinkled in for solidity/humor
Online Magazine for video snippets
We’d cover our 48-hour magazine during the weekend of one of the Peirogi eating contests
Length:
Use tumblr as our format to keep updating after our 48 hour deadline
Articles:
1. Gambling Problems/Addiction
2. Seafood Buffet/Free Drinks (pop)
3. Entertainers-Journey Cover Bands
4. Winning and Losing stories/Range of Emotions
5. People, NRA convention-Time Lapse of a certain table/machine
-Convention Center events that draw in crowds to the casino
-How the people in Pittsburgh see the casino vs. other cities in US (Vegas and Atlantic City dress up)
6. Slot Machines, different types, penny machines (kitty glitter-a cat themed slot machine)
7. How to get banned from a casino: Using a fake ID
8. Policy on counting cards: could be a how to illustrative guide, how to play the games, count cards, etc
9. Employee’s outfits and funny stories
10. Card members and Player’s Club (bios on people who have these)
11. Dealer School- story about how to become a card dealer
12. Pro Poker players, any famous people from Pittsburgh seen there?
13. Recent Jackpot Winners!
14. How bad of an idea having a casino credit line is
Art wise:
Photography
Illustrations, cartoons, diagrams, labeled parts
Videos (time lapse and short interviews)
Stats: Short blurbs/side bars/cartoons
About money dropped
How much the employee’s make
How many people go there
Lab 2
Jon Krakauer's Facebook
Chuck Klosterman's Twitter
Chuck tends to post locations and times of his readings and there are plenty of retweets from other users. I think that this is a colloquial way of interacting with his followers. It's nice that he takes the time to respond to people who may or may not be other non-fiction writers who are fans of his work, because he's often @ing users and saying "thanks man". I scroll past these tweets, but I think that they're necessary, and how else would he quickly thank people for kind words? His style of tweeting works for me and I really enjoy what he has to say. It helps when you're clever and funny and can fit your sense of humor in 140 characters.
Krakauer's Facebook is probably not run by him, but one of his PR people. So getting past that, his facebook is a lot of links to his work on Byliner or articles people have written about him. It's nice to be able find excerpts of his work, interviews, and articles so readily. It's almost an archive rather than a personal facebook page, but it's helpful that he makes them available to his followers. It's kind of self indulgent to include your own quotes all over your Facebook page, so that doesn't really work for me. I think it's a pretty impersonal form of social media for non-fiction writers. There are NO status updates, only links to take you away from his facebook page to other pages that are relevant to him. His facebook page doesn't work for me, even though I love the pictures of him at the Magic Bus.
I don't think either of their pages is overbearing or "too-much", but I think that twitter is more successful for writers to interact with their readers than facebook.
Chuck Klosterman's Twitter
Chuck tends to post locations and times of his readings and there are plenty of retweets from other users. I think that this is a colloquial way of interacting with his followers. It's nice that he takes the time to respond to people who may or may not be other non-fiction writers who are fans of his work, because he's often @ing users and saying "thanks man". I scroll past these tweets, but I think that they're necessary, and how else would he quickly thank people for kind words? His style of tweeting works for me and I really enjoy what he has to say. It helps when you're clever and funny and can fit your sense of humor in 140 characters.
Krakauer's Facebook is probably not run by him, but one of his PR people. So getting past that, his facebook is a lot of links to his work on Byliner or articles people have written about him. It's nice to be able find excerpts of his work, interviews, and articles so readily. It's almost an archive rather than a personal facebook page, but it's helpful that he makes them available to his followers. It's kind of self indulgent to include your own quotes all over your Facebook page, so that doesn't really work for me. I think it's a pretty impersonal form of social media for non-fiction writers. There are NO status updates, only links to take you away from his facebook page to other pages that are relevant to him. His facebook page doesn't work for me, even though I love the pictures of him at the Magic Bus.
I don't think either of their pages is overbearing or "too-much", but I think that twitter is more successful for writers to interact with their readers than facebook.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Online Scavenger Hunt
1. William Faulker's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech
"Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself."-W.F.
2. January 1st, 1644 fell on a Friday. The weather in Philly from the 1st-10th was cloudy and rainy with occasional sunshine and somewhat warm.
3.5 Deadliest Hurricanes
1. Katrina (2005) Louisiana, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Kentucky 1,500+deaths (approx 1844)
2. Floyd (1999) The Bahamas, the Atlantic Coast, New England and Canada were all affected 56 deaths
3. Allison (2001) Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, and up the Atlantic coast 41 deaths
4. Hugo (1989) South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania 35 deaths
5. Alberto (1994) Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana 25 deaths
4. Blueprint of Frank Lloyd Wright's house Fallingwater
5. Ernest Hemingway's 1923 passport photo:
observations
-His number ends in 666
-It is physically stapled to the paper
-He has nice hair
-There is a signature over the image in black ink, I'm assuming his name
-The print of the paper the picture is stapled onto says "United States Passport
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Follow 10 new twitter accounts
1. Rob Dobi, photographer of cool abandoned places.
2. Writing in Public
3. Poets & Writers
4. Chuck Klosterman
5. Grantland
6. Colson Whitehead
7. Elite Editing
8. Pitt Writing Program
9. Feverzine
10. Publisher's Weekly Reviews
2. Writing in Public
3. Poets & Writers
4. Chuck Klosterman
5. Grantland
6. Colson Whitehead
7. Elite Editing
8. Pitt Writing Program
9. Feverzine
10. Publisher's Weekly Reviews
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Vice Magazine Beta or Better?
Vice is a magazine that just recently, within the past couple days, revamped their website. They added some unexpected online interactions like a self-updating feed with top, most popular, and latest stories. Users have to option to embed this feed onto their own websites like wordpress or maybe even blogger. There is even a not so appropriate NSFW (not safe for work) tab that classifies all the things that you wouldn't want your boss to see you looking at behind your desk. Thanks for making everyone who looks at Viceland.com no longer worry about scrolling down to see a topless model while you're killing time in a crowded computer lab. The new layout is much more organized and categorized neatly, I'm not familiar with their print publication that comes out monthly, but I can say that they're really stepped up their online game. The slide shows are much more user friendly compared to the old slide shows which were just one photo per page and you had to a click a link for the entire next page to load to see more photos. Even the video content is organized into a slideshow like series, where you can click onto the next video from a string of thumbnails. This site is just generally way more user friendly and interactive. Vice's entire existence is a hybrid of conservative and contemporary in that it presents news like any other site would, but it uses fresh language and often covers stories that well-too-do publications would most often ignore. I selected this site to discuss because in comparison to other more tradition websites, even something as off-beat and sometimes bizarre as Vice is, it still allows itself room for change. It's not so set in its layout to neglect it's online users and is always progressive when it comes to online "do's and don'ts".
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Pitt Housing Resources
-Angela Reynolds, Pitt Housing "Expert".
-Pitt's University Center for Social and Urban Research blog could have many surveys and statistics to help us with our project.
-Powerpoint provided by Pitt's Off Campus Living program. This resource is factual and can help students differentiate between slumlords and land lords.
-College Prowler, a rating site that rates a University on it's off campus housing. Not necessarily credible, but interesting.
-An article from the Pitt News about a new prospective housing building on campus.
-Pitt's University Center for Social and Urban Research blog could have many surveys and statistics to help us with our project.
-Powerpoint provided by Pitt's Off Campus Living program. This resource is factual and can help students differentiate between slumlords and land lords.
-College Prowler, a rating site that rates a University on it's off campus housing. Not necessarily credible, but interesting.
-An article from the Pitt News about a new prospective housing building on campus.
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
Credibility: Opinions and Biases
There are websites like the Onion and magazines like the National Enquirer that most people would have to be under the influence of illegal drugs to consider them a serious news source. Other websites such as Huffington Post and The Informed Vegan however, fall somewhere inside the interpretive spectrums of "fact", "opinion", and "bias".
I have some qualms with the Huffington Post. Yes, the tagline of the website does state, "Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post", but where is the distinction between the two? A friend of a friend recently got published on Huffington's website. When we asked her how she was able to be published online, she only said that she "had an in" and divulged nothing further. Even though I didn't go straight to the source and ask the managing editor of the website why she was published, this insinuation made me reconsider the validity of some of their articles. I find most information on the Huffington Post reliable, but this particular situation makes it seem like any Jane Doe with a personal connection to the magazine staff can be published. I am in no way invalidating her article, which discussed the importance of attending college despite the growing difficulty of finding sufficient funds to do so, I'm only analyzing the way in which Huffington Post goes about finding selections for online content. Maybe she's an intern and got the opportunity to submit an article, who knows.
Some other sites online may be full of facts, but are not taken seriously because of their emotional biases. The Informed Vegan is a site that I frequent often and despite the lifestyle bias that surrounds this site, I find it completely credible and reliable. Most opinion based websites aren't usually backed up by statistics and facts. For example, the Informed Vegan has daily news stories (surprisingly there are enough animal rights/vegan charged topics to create a web platform for them) from various sources like CNN, NY Times, and others. The articles are written in colloquial language and obviously speak out against the abuse of animals. The most common technique is taking an article that describes some animal misuse and cynically explains why Sara Lee, for example, is a terrible corporation. This may deter some readers. By saying this information conversationally, does it make the posts less reliable? I don't believe so. They also embed links into their articles that take readers back to the source of the story or other related information. Even the Statistics link on the website looks a little less than trustworthy, with it's "Post Secret" structure, but each entry is backed up with a link containing those statistics. I think it's important for the website to try as hard as possible to dissuade non-vegans from writing off the information as "militant vegan bullshit". Even if I wasn't vegan, and I happened upon this site, I would still find it informative and wouldn't doubt it's content just because most meat-eaters view them as ranting hippies. I am not saying however, that some other websites are credible only because they supply facts. This is seen in the case of Wikipedia. Site members can make up facts and post false entries that are either a meager attempt at humor or just complete absurd. In the case of The Informed Vegan however, I'm only saying that it's harder to dispute news findings from other credible sources.
Sometimes websites become discredited because of the biases that the people who read their websites conform to. I find that this is the most common way that internet sources because less reliable. Most people get news via word of mouth, and in my experiences, most people exaggerate, leave out key points, or shift the story to favor a certain person or point of view. The Internet is a never ending resource that allows people to research the validity of their information, but if false news comes from a seemingly-but-not-so-reliable friend, than those facts have already been polluted. This stuff is even sometimes recycled not only verbally, but through the internet. Twitter posts, message board threats, or Facebook updates can parade this stuff as true when in reality, the facts are skewed and people accept them at face value.
This goes to say that one shouldn't never stop researching facts online. If something seems sketchy, look it up. If something seems too good to be true, look it up, and if you just want to be doubly sure? Look. It. Up.
I have some qualms with the Huffington Post. Yes, the tagline of the website does state, "Breaking News and Opinion on The Huffington Post", but where is the distinction between the two? A friend of a friend recently got published on Huffington's website. When we asked her how she was able to be published online, she only said that she "had an in" and divulged nothing further. Even though I didn't go straight to the source and ask the managing editor of the website why she was published, this insinuation made me reconsider the validity of some of their articles. I find most information on the Huffington Post reliable, but this particular situation makes it seem like any Jane Doe with a personal connection to the magazine staff can be published. I am in no way invalidating her article, which discussed the importance of attending college despite the growing difficulty of finding sufficient funds to do so, I'm only analyzing the way in which Huffington Post goes about finding selections for online content. Maybe she's an intern and got the opportunity to submit an article, who knows.
Some other sites online may be full of facts, but are not taken seriously because of their emotional biases. The Informed Vegan is a site that I frequent often and despite the lifestyle bias that surrounds this site, I find it completely credible and reliable. Most opinion based websites aren't usually backed up by statistics and facts. For example, the Informed Vegan has daily news stories (surprisingly there are enough animal rights/vegan charged topics to create a web platform for them) from various sources like CNN, NY Times, and others. The articles are written in colloquial language and obviously speak out against the abuse of animals. The most common technique is taking an article that describes some animal misuse and cynically explains why Sara Lee, for example, is a terrible corporation. This may deter some readers. By saying this information conversationally, does it make the posts less reliable? I don't believe so. They also embed links into their articles that take readers back to the source of the story or other related information. Even the Statistics link on the website looks a little less than trustworthy, with it's "Post Secret" structure, but each entry is backed up with a link containing those statistics. I think it's important for the website to try as hard as possible to dissuade non-vegans from writing off the information as "militant vegan bullshit". Even if I wasn't vegan, and I happened upon this site, I would still find it informative and wouldn't doubt it's content just because most meat-eaters view them as ranting hippies. I am not saying however, that some other websites are credible only because they supply facts. This is seen in the case of Wikipedia. Site members can make up facts and post false entries that are either a meager attempt at humor or just complete absurd. In the case of The Informed Vegan however, I'm only saying that it's harder to dispute news findings from other credible sources.
Sometimes websites become discredited because of the biases that the people who read their websites conform to. I find that this is the most common way that internet sources because less reliable. Most people get news via word of mouth, and in my experiences, most people exaggerate, leave out key points, or shift the story to favor a certain person or point of view. The Internet is a never ending resource that allows people to research the validity of their information, but if false news comes from a seemingly-but-not-so-reliable friend, than those facts have already been polluted. This stuff is even sometimes recycled not only verbally, but through the internet. Twitter posts, message board threats, or Facebook updates can parade this stuff as true when in reality, the facts are skewed and people accept them at face value.
This goes to say that one shouldn't never stop researching facts online. If something seems sketchy, look it up. If something seems too good to be true, look it up, and if you just want to be doubly sure? Look. It. Up.
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
CD Wright's "One Big Self"
What do you think about people who take non-fiction experiences and use that in a more creative way?
CD Wright interviewed women from three maximum security prisons in Louisiana and wrote the book One Big Self based from these interviews with inmates.
Most of the content and language is pulled directly from the mouths of these interviews. She used recording tools and took notes during this whole process, the way a journalist would.
Does this still count as non-fiction? I feel that it's recounting experience in a journalistic and experimentally poetic way.
CD Wright interviewed women from three maximum security prisons in Louisiana and wrote the book One Big Self based from these interviews with inmates.
Most of the content and language is pulled directly from the mouths of these interviews. She used recording tools and took notes during this whole process, the way a journalist would.
Does this still count as non-fiction? I feel that it's recounting experience in a journalistic and experimentally poetic way.
Links to my favorite non fiction writers:
David Sedaris excerpt from Me Talk Pretty One Day
Sylvia Plath excerpts from her Unabridged Journal's
Extra link:
Chuck Klosterman
Excerpt from my favorite Klosterman book, "Killing Yourself to Live"
Sylvia Plath excerpts from her Unabridged Journal's
Extra link:
Chuck Klosterman
Excerpt from my favorite Klosterman book, "Killing Yourself to Live"
Sunday, September 4, 2011
Why I'm taking this course:
Social media is so prominent in my daily to day life that I often overlook the education opportunities that it provides. I hope to advance my knowledge of current events and further my experience in non-fiction. Becoming fluent in non-fiction is a way that I hope to market my English degree in poetry. I want to receive my certificate in Professional and Public Writing, so that I can hopefully work for some sort of agency, publisher, or other employee that requires non-creative writing while I simultaneously pursue my poetic career. Ideally, I'd like to work for a poetry or music magazine. I'm at the point in my life where knowing what is happening in the world, societies, and other communities around me is a priority in my independent education.
I also want to be able to update my social media platform in a more progressive way, rather than a daily vomit of personal thoughts and events. You'd never think that "growing up" would include one's behavior on social media, but this class just proves the point.
My favorite non-fiction writers are David Sedaris, and even though Sylvia Plath is a poet, she has an amazing personal journal kept from her times at Smith College. She has always been someone I have admired because of her strength and spunk as a writer and woman in the academic realm. Her vision and use of language is intense, brutally honest, and innovative. David Sedaris is just so clever and intelligent. I like that I can pick up "Me Talk Pretty One Day", read a story, laugh, and be on my way with a pleasant sense of his experiences and personality. From this class, I would like to become more familiar with well know authors of non-fiction. I'd like to learn their styles and techniques to help guide my growth as a non-fiction writer and translate those practices into poetry.
-Molly Burkett
I also want to be able to update my social media platform in a more progressive way, rather than a daily vomit of personal thoughts and events. You'd never think that "growing up" would include one's behavior on social media, but this class just proves the point.
My favorite non-fiction writers are David Sedaris, and even though Sylvia Plath is a poet, she has an amazing personal journal kept from her times at Smith College. She has always been someone I have admired because of her strength and spunk as a writer and woman in the academic realm. Her vision and use of language is intense, brutally honest, and innovative. David Sedaris is just so clever and intelligent. I like that I can pick up "Me Talk Pretty One Day", read a story, laugh, and be on my way with a pleasant sense of his experiences and personality. From this class, I would like to become more familiar with well know authors of non-fiction. I'd like to learn their styles and techniques to help guide my growth as a non-fiction writer and translate those practices into poetry.
-Molly Burkett
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