The Agrinautica

   Today my computer crashed while trying to save my recently-created index page. Seconds later while trying to save my winamp playlist I had made numerous changes on, the mouse moved unintended (as is its tendency, it thinks its a ouji peice I swear) just as I was about to click "save list," thus hitting "new list" instead and annihilating my changed list. Just now the browser crashed while trying to save the original version of this update, causing me to lose it all. What a pleasant day )=
   And thing is... once something like that happens, I HAVE to do it over again and get it right, otherwise I will never get over the displeasure thus caused. Like when my ramen exploded all over my room that one day.. I didn't feel a great need for more ramen, and coupled with the ensuing exasperation, I could easily have gone without. Nonetheless, once I had cleaned up the stupendous mess as best I could, I immediately manufactured another bowl of ramen.

   Anyway. In short: today I made the rest of the Spectrum Diedrichs series available online, and made an index page of the various publications I've put online lately.

   I therefore urge you to look at Episode II of the How Krisis Met Fishis (Legend of the Spectrum Diedrichs) trilogy. If you neglected to read ::gasp::, no longer recall, or would like to first refresh your memory with Episode I (Night of the Fountain) it is available as well.
   The stories of course take place on December 29th, 30th, and 31st, 2001, respectively, and were written within the next few weeks by Fishes and I, alternating lines on AOL IM.


AN EXCERPT FROM EPISODE II
   And from there they sped boldly, and found Todd bravely hiding amid some small shrubs. In only a few short minutes they calmed him down, and with him in custody they sped along that glorious freeway, the five. And when the road did split into the 405 and the 5, they did not dishearten, and arrived successfully at the Spectrum, that glorious beacon. They entered the confines of its white walls by the famous cool waters of the west-side fountain, proceeded among the thatched roofs of the many indigenous shops, till they arrived among the hallowed lions by the food court, newly reshrubbed, and stood before famous Diedrich's Coffee.


   So yea... leave me feedback comments, even if its just telling my your favorite part. For extra points, name all the songs quoted in the episode. (=

   OMG. So pretty much every class day from now on (ie twice a week) we will be "workshopping" three people's stories. Meaning we must read them beforehand (and write a 1/2 to 1 page critique of each) and discuss them for 45 minutes in class. I don't know how I am going to survive 45 minutes of each, but just reading the three for monday right now made me want to retch.
   I swear, this livejournal entry is more coherent, better follows the established rules of short story writing, and is better reading than the three stories I just read. I certainly do not feel like I am exagerrating at all to say this entry is more grammatically correct and with better spelling.
   After the first story I thought it wasn't very good, right, but I decided to read the other two before a passed any judgement. And a good thing I did, because in comparison it is glorious! The second story proceeded in a manner that... well at least was a thousand times better than the THIRD story, but ended without a point. You've seen the graph of how a plot is supposed to develop right? -where it slowly slowly curves up, reaching its height at the climax near the end and then swiftly falling again to conclusion?- Well this one was more like a straight line descending steadily downward the whole time. After finishing it I felt violated for having the previous ten minutes of my life irretrievably stolen. But then... then I read the third story. First line: "Mom where are my yellow socks!" yelled the teen from down the hall.
   Now aside from the missing comma after "mom," and the question-mark that probably should at least be coupled with the exclamation point to form "socks!?" (in fact in comparison to everything else I didn't even note these complaints), I knew without a doubt upon reading that line that the story had been written by a girl. And indeed it had. As you may recall I had mentioned a short time ago that every girl in the class had written about girls feeling neglected. After the fourth such story was read aloud I assumed that by now the unimaginative trend must be obvious to everyone and no more would be written. Once again however, the persistance of foolishness has been shown to us! (Let me qualify that I am not saying every girl is a terrible writer, just that those in the class are entirely those frumpy teacher-to-be aspiring prudes who fancy themselves undiscovered writers while lacking any semblance of skill (and oblivious to that fact) whom I despise most among all people.)
   The third story had less of a plot than the previous (whereas the other could be drawn a descending line, this one was a line as flat as a measurement of the mental activity of its writer's brain), more grammatical errors than the previous two put together, and an enragingly idiotic rendering of dialogues. The word "honey" was consistently changed to "hunny," a change which does NOT change the pronuncation of the word, and as such only makes me want to deck someone, and most stupendous of all, and I quote: "com' on you!" -Yes, she eliminated a SILENT freakin E. Passing by that my brain turns several times in an attempt to rationalize the implied pronunciation and then throws up its hands and leaves the building in disgust.
   How I am going to survive 45 minutes each of discussing these abominations I truly cannot fathom.


on a brighter note:
THREE EASY STEPS TO BOTHER YOUR TEACHER (without causing grounds for worse grading)
   (A) Set your spell check on an alternative form of English. In my case, its firmly set on Irish. Such that when I accidentally type "maneuver" it corrects me with "manoeuvre," and I hadn't even realized that "analyze" is correctly spelt "analyse" over there. Good times. The teacher can't hold it against you if your writing is from an alternative form of English that WILL be backed by any American dictionary as well.
   (B) Emphasize the controlled nature of your stories. The teacher would always like to think they are simply benevolently guiding their gifted students in writing their own stories. But you know otherwise: they are tyrannically assigning you to write in very stringent guidelines. As such, either neglect a "normal" title and write like "ENL5F-A06 - Assignment # 7" or something at the top, or if you can't resist a conventional title, at least make it less significantly stated than the officious statement of assignment. (in my example, ENL5F is the class, A06 is a section number, my class doesn't have sections, but if one does have section one should certainly cite it as in the example - if you don't know what I'm talking about just follow this simple rule: any number you have an excuse to throw in, do so)
   (C) Identify, anticipate and address the issues you expect the teacher to cite you for. For example a sentence in my final paper for ENL57E last year read "Is one really supposed to write a paper in which the vast majority of sentences are actually questions?" and answered it shortly with "Yet, that is the style of argument favored by the ancient philosopher Socrates. Why, you ask, have we suddenly gone off on this tangent? Many highly affective styles are summarily failed by the Subject A exam." And in the interim between that first sentence and those second several, I even slipped in the phrase "procrustean mold," another entirely legitimate phrase. In my most recent story, The Legend of Boot, I deviously sneak both the phrases "passive voice" and "awkward constructions" into the dialogue. The theory is, that they mark you down for things they allege you are not aware of or carelessly neglected to rectify. If it is quite obvious that you intended to write exactly what you wrote, most English teachers rightiously proud of their recognition of "stylistic" intentions, cannot justify marking you down for it, no matter how much they wish to.

   The correct use of these three things will cause your teacher to feel insecure, having presented them with a paper they have a vague urge to mark down but cannot justify themselves in so doing. This will result in a lessening of their usual feeling of utter superiority over students, and one will find the resultant freedom from their predations to be quite pleasant I am sure.

   Yea so I was up all night writing The Legend of Boot, my definitive attempt at shaking my fist at all modern writing conventions. So like.. read it. Yea.

   Once again that is http://www.geocities.com/winged_snail/ENL5F-082.htm . You know you want to like.. give me feedback on it. Hmmyea.


ADDENDUM: 04/31/03 28:38
   Some reviews of the story in question:

"glaring misuses of English" -my mother

"Verily, the teacher of your class that is English of 5 must be hated by you, my friend" -Eric from the List.

   Its 4:40am, I have just finished drinking by myself and talking to comrade Fish on the phone for an hour or so, and am eating saltines. Such is my life.

   Finished ENL5F-07. I really wasn't very inspired by this one.. just wanted to get it done. The story of course can be found here.

   The prompt was: "Write the monologue of a liar. (1-2 typed pages.)" that is all.

   My first thought regarding the assignment was to our beloved Iraqi comrade, Al-Sahaf, and his shameless claims of complete dominion over US forces up until the point he disappeared. But there was no point really in making a parody of that, because his own lies were already so apparent, outragious and hyperbolic that there was no way I could beat him. So instead my International Relations tendencies led me in the direction of Milosevic. But I've already got a Soviet story so that whole slavic area has already kinda been done by me; and memories resurfaced of testifying in the International Court of Justice at the MVHS Model UN conference 2002 as a villager in a Congolese village destroyed by Ugandan troops. "Would you say they [there follows a long list of human rights abuses]?" "yes, and the killing of goats!" says I in broken English. Coincidentally that same day I also testified as Radovan Karidvic, a Bosnian war-criminal accused of similar atrocities. So in a way, I have been in the place of both those characters in the story. How many of YOU have been on trial for war crimes before??
   Entirely coincidentally, I did a search on google to find a nice Ugandan name (as you can see in the story, I ended up using none), I came across this article, which basically addresses the exact situation my story regards, and sets it in a perfect context.

   As I mentioned I was not very into this story, and hence there are several severe inconsistancies that I would otherwise try to eliminate. Let me set forth that I am aware of them. (A)The witnesses are present for one another's testimoney, that is totally wack; (B)I have no idea WHERE this takes place, surely neither Uganda nor Congo, but it doesn't seem to me like ICJ headquarters in The Hague now either... eh, mainly just that witness thing bugs me. Oh well, odds of the teacher noticing that= 63:1

   And now.. hmm.. now sleeping prolly isn't even a very good idea but oh well.

   I have now edited together an annotated version of ENL5F-034, which was my story about the Soviet interrogation, starring everyone's favorite Ivan, Yuri, and nine grams of lead.
   This annotated version includes the story with the teacher's edits (indicated by square brackets [] or strikethroughs), my commentary on her recommendations (my comments being primarily sarcastic and derisive in nature of course), and my general commentary on the theme of the story, the story behind the story, reasons I chose the names I did, and such.

( Themes You Probably Missed )

   My favorite part is where she changes a sentence that reads basically "A and B were C and D" to "A and B, were C, and D."

   So of course this morning I was touring my friend Brianna ("Bree") LeMay around campus because she is considering either this place or like, SLO I think. In ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING. She's so crazy. Yea.


   I got back the interrogation story I wrote. Silly teacher who recons herself so distanced from conventionalism established herself to firmly subscribe to an odd regime of "dialogue should not deliver information" which is starkly opposed to what I was initially taught (though I think the context I was taught it in was a theory by Shakespeare, and playwriting may be different, as it is essentially ALL dialogue), but the definitiveness with which teacher is convinced there should be an utter seperation of dialogue and information I find foolish. So psha on her.
   As USUAL she wrote "good start to an interesting story" on it. Half the characters are freakin DED in the end and the whole issue is nicely wrapped up within the story, so how she sees this leading to a larger story is beyond me.


   As can be seen by the previous entry Annie (pocketbookannie) taught me a crafty trick to host pictures at geocities. In her infinite wisdom she also taught me how to make those entries where you click on something to make it expand, and how so put that little link to someone's user account as well. She wrote these numerous things on a napkin for me.


   The ASUCD Supreme Court is being foolish again, as usual. They want to have a weekly column in the Aggie, in which they will discuss god knows what. I'm a bit concerned because there's a strong precedent of Supreme Courts NOT going around offering unsolicited opinions on things. It appears that the supporters of this idea have strong support among the others of the Court however, so we'll see we'll see.. their first "article" it appears will the opinion they wrote about why they aren't taking the last case (Birman, Fricke vs whomever), so I can deal with that.. we'll see what future issues they try to write about and gun them on a case by case basis.


   And now.. now it is 05:35(am), and I must write "Rewrite the beginning of a myth, fable, or fairy tale through a new perspective. If you always write in first person, try second or third. If you always write in third person, try first or second, ect. You may alter the setting here as well, and make it contemporary, if you wish. (1-3 typed pages)" before 14:10, and I'd LIKE to study hella russian before office hours at 10:00am, as we have a test tomarrow and..yea.
   As regards the writing assignment.. there's not much room to be imaginative and crazy with it; I mean sure I could take something completely out of context in those parameters and like.. put Beowulf in space or something wack like that.. but I dunno.. thats too expected ..it just doesn't feel right. I strongly believe that first person is wack, and second person is crap, but whatever, I guess I'll do first since I always do third. Seriously thoguh I think writings in 1st person are usually jsut a cheap way the author tries to make something seem more personal.. I think it works about as well as using rampant profanity to make a point. And second person? Thats just some sick bastardized cross between first and third. Gah, I hate aspiring writers. I think one should not aspire directly to be a writer (As does our teacher and numerous in the class), but merely write because one has something to say, something to write. And if in so doing they happen to bring themselves success as a writer, so be it. I hate people.

   Anyway right now I'm of the opinion of doing this character Humbaba that is killed by Gilgamesh in Gilgamesh, since it turns out my original intention of doing Grendel from Beowulf has SO been done. Psha on that. I better start writing now.