Discourse Chronicle

Ironic, because the book is all about image: the vision of the Green Knight when he arrives amid the Yuletide revels; the image of perfection that Gawain’s shield represents, a pentangle on one side and Mary on the other; the picture of the perfect chivalrous knight that Gawain finds burdensome when he’s face to face with an avid reader of romances and doesn’t feel up to the role; and the picture of heroism that Gawain measures himself against — and finds he is lacking. -K. A. Laity

[Kate is referring to the cover of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight translated by W.S. Merwin and how it relates with the story. BK]

category: Literacy, Poetry, Rhetoric and Poetics    

[People who know me know I am a Tom Petty fan. “Saving Grace” is the first single from his new solo album, Highway Companion, following up Full Moon Fever and Wildflowers. Sweet! BK]

category: Poetry, Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics    

[From Girl Meets World. Another ridiculously fun web toy. BK]

category: Humor, Literacy, Poetry, Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics, Technology    

Apple confirmed Thursday it has included such a warning in its Intel-based computers since it started selling them in January.

The embedded poem reads: “Your karma check for today: There once was a user that whined / his existing OS was so blind / he’d do better to pirate / an OS that ran great / but found his hardware declined. / Please don’t steal Mac OS! / Really, that’s way uncool. / (C) Apple Computer, Inc.”

Apple also put in a separate hidden message, “Don’t Steal Mac OS X.kext,” in another spot for would-be hackers.

[Hilarious! BK]

category: Humor, Poetry, Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics, Technology    

In March, IDW Publishing will present a special 12-part exploration of Clive Barker’s epic novel, The Great and Secret Show: “The First Book of the Art”. Adapted with the full cooperation and assistance of Barker himself, this sprawling tale of secret lives and secret lands is equal parts fantasy, horror story and love fable. As Barker himself describes the book, “it’s about Hollywood, sex, and Armageddon.” The book is being adapted by the same team that tackled George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead, IDW’s Publisher and Editor-in-Chief, Chris Ryall, and artist Gabriel Rodriguez.

category: Comics, Poetry, Popular Culture    

Andreas Wieslander’s bachelor thesis, entitled “IN REAL GAME,” is “a project about marketing games through live performances, in order to focus on the games feel, rather than its graphics and sfx.”

He has chosen the infectious beats and charms of the PlayStation classic Parappa the Rapper to illustrate this concept. They act out the roles of Cheep Cheep and Parappa in a rendition of “Cheep Cheep Cooking Chicken’s Rap,” complete with seafood cake, live backing band, and Parappa’s jerky delivery. “Crack. Crack. Crack. The egg. Into. The bowl.”

[From Nick Stepaniak. The link shows a three and a half minute video of this project. BK]

category: Gaming, Humor, Pedagogy, Poetry, Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics, Technology    

[Stumpo:] We have put up a website which invites visitors to try to write the 7th book in the Harry Potter series before J.K. Rowling can. Each visitor can be reader, writer, and editor, contributing to and changing this ever-evolving project. With any luck, there will be multiple versions of the “book” by time the experiment ends (and those interested on a scholarly level will be able to view the changes that take place over time, as these will be automatically saved and archived on the site).

[We all know how much disdain I possess toward Harry Potter, however, this project sounds cool because of its creative writing properties along with textual editing concerns it may raise. JeFF Stumpo is a colleague from the English department who hosts JavaShock, a slam poetry showcase, twice per semester at Revolutions Cafe in Bryan, TX. BK]

category: Bibliography, Literacy, Poetry, Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics, Technology    

“Smatterwashed Blue” by Joshua Butcher

Walking along the smatterwashed blue,
The traveller under burdening boughs,
He comes, he goes, from where to whence,
A seven day journey for a sovereign sixpence.
A seven day journey for a sick, spent sovereign.
Sauntering jaunt that vaunts him along long ways,
A long way away spies the damsel in grey.
Stay said his companion (within him abreast),
Stay he replied pounding and clasping still.
Flying along the batterbled green,
The traveller over spring sponge tuft,
He goes, he comes, from whence to here,
Left over minding made marked memory.
A long way she sighs in shades of yearn,
Sway swoon says her ghostly complexion,
Swathe not she replied in corporal tones,
And never the Twain shall meet.
And evermore shall the Poe be with us,
There are no Wordsworth our times,
So Swift our past–through the fires of slight.
Will she be rescued, will she be saved?
Will she be colored, no longer grey?
Shaded in red, smattered with blood,
Turns of the tide; sweet summoner flood.

[Thanks, Josh! BK]

category: Humor, Life, Poetry, Rhetoric and Poetics    

“Philosophical Poetic Polemic” by Joshua Butcher

Snippets of time snatch quality space,
Space and time, one Hegel-of-a Kantinuum.
Plato with play dough fashioned the Forms,
Oh bother, said Aristotle, what’s the Matter?
Then Aquinas went medieval on his class[(re)(ifications)]!
But let us not forget that saintly sex-crazed monk,
Who brought us an august catholic confessional.
I back and Thou forth, merry go we round,
Swing pendulum swing, slip up, slide down,
Its all this, its all that, Sisyphus climbs up to your lap,
And ponder this sitting and setting of System,
Drink deep of the swell, of the Spirit, of the Agon,
Polemical dialectics of Kierkegaardian proportion,
Heidegger you dig her we dig her now (but only just),
Shall we slip and elide the Lacanian subject,
And pass on to go by the power of Foucault?
If the Idea is an ideal conjunction junction,
Can faithless Form lead to full-bodied function?
It all pell-mell to gorgeous Gorgias going, going, goes,
And anything goes; those running with feet, on their toes.
And (Dar)rida I leave out, so many dear de—parted friends,
I trust they are forever so clever: just means to dead ends.

[Josh is a colleague of mine from the Communication department who allowed me to post his poems here. He shared this and another one in Rhetoric and Poetics a few weeks ago. It brought me to tears from laughing so hard. BK]

category: Humor, Life, Poetry, Rhetoric and Poetics