I've decided to post my Capstone notes on a different Blog, which is part of an on-going journal for that class. I now have four Blogs to post on--this one, my Caplog, one for Updating my home page, and the Foundation of the Rose blog. Speaking of which, two silly questions:
*When is Gabe gonna up and post so Max can suddenly have a name and gender switch?
*When is Ki gonna get back? I miss Ki. ;_; <---sad, sad me.

Oh, and I also have a sort of online diary at pitas.com. Why? Well, take a look at my class schedule! On Monday, I have three and a half hours between classes. Say it again with me, three and a half hours. (Of course on Wednesday, I have only one class. I suppose this could make up for things.) On Tuesday and Thursday, I have two hours and fifteen minutes between Class One and Classes Two and Three. And on Tuesdays, I have another two hours between Class Three and Class Four, then have to wait in the library for...you guessed it, another two hours before I can catch a bus and go home since my Prof. seems to really disapprove of having to leave class early. I think I might do it anyways...'cause by that time, I just really would like (wanna!) go home.

Yes, Paul, you were right. The Internet lets you whine like no other. Huzzah!

And now, to the classes!

American Lit: We looked at Internet stuff on authors and listened to jazz. I should say "attempted to look at stuff," 'cause the Prof. ran it through Oncourse and it wasn't reading the stuff out of her directory. It was amusing in that funny-old-people-and-technology sort of way. :) I suggested that she could click on the pics in her directory to get them to work, and she now has a very high opinion of me. As well as because I lent Missy the Discworld book. That seems to have been an amazing investment. :) But in any case, we didn't cover much. We talked a little about Stream of Conciousness and the Modernist view of time. SoC is where an author emulates the way people actually think and remember, the stream of thoughts in a person's mind. James Joyce and Marcel Proust are famous for this style. The Modernist view of time is that is is artificial, a structure imposed by man--that the only true time is NOW. This is reflected in the seemingly disjointed perspectives in Modernist works.

Writing Fiction: Ahh, this class is FUN. The Prof. passed back some work he'd collected from us, and I was told I have nice descriptions and stuff. We talked about voice and perspective, and through a very funny little illustration of an accident (really, ya HAD to be there), he showed the various perspectives a story can take. These are:
Third Person:
Omniscient--knows everything in every character's head.
Editorial omniscient--This wasn't totally clear, but it apparently is where the narrator not only knows everything in everyone's heads, but also everything they've done and what they will do. Like I said, none too clear, but this is the voice that used to be used in old Victorian novels.
Limited omniscient--only knows the thoughts of one character. This is the most commonly used third person voice today. It's the standard third person narrator, I do believe.
First Person
Narrator as character--the person telling the story is also the protagonist.
Narrator as reporter--it's the person telling the story off to the side. The example we used for this is the Sherlock Holmes story, in which Watson primarily tells the tale and Holmes does the work. He's the protagonist.
"Floating" narrator (my term)--when more than one character tells their story through first person. An example of this would be when an author has more than one character tell the story, like in the book "Emergence" by David Palmer. I like this version miself.
We then experimented in voice, which is essentially the reflection of the character and a good way to characterize, by writing a person and then some sort of thought, splitting the sheet in two, and switching sheets. I ended up with both halves of the Prof's sheet, as well as reading my story to him. After this exercise, we discussed "Golden Honeymoon" and "Here We Are" in a friendly, happy way. The atmosphere of this class RULES.

LPG: I came to this class with a splitting headache, and it's lucky Sylvia had ibuprofen, or I wouldn't have made it. Also, it's really hard to take notes in this class...though Susan (the Prof--I've had her before, and it's just natural to call her that) is a fascinating lecturer. She also seems to have chilled out from G104.
Distilled notes
We first discussed the history of LPG, how it started off in anthropology with anthropologist noting (with excitement) that in many primitive cultures men and women seemed to speak different languages. This was actually not the case--rather, women and men spoke mutually intelligible dialects of the language, meaning despite the differences in their speech, both sexes understood what the other was saying. For example, extremely taboo words might be avoided down to the phoneme level (meaning they wouldn't allow even the sounds of a taboo word into their form of the language) in woman's speech. The reasons for the apparently different languages is because of exogamy, in which tribes marry outside of their own. If most of the men got their wives from the same tribe, then those women would have their own tongue that they would speak in private, though they would know the language of the tribe itself. There would a mixing and mingling of languages, but usually in tribal settings, there is a different way to speak for women and men. These speech differences are socialized behaviors.
In the 60's and 70's, gender oppression and gender stereotypes in language were the focus of most studies. The most common stereotypes between speech for men are women are:
Men: Don't emote, use slang and swear more, tell jokes better, and interrupt more
Women: Talk a lot and gossip, are hypercorrective about grammar, more polite, use more flowery or empty adjectives, use hedges and tag questions more, and vary their intonation more.
*Tag questions: Adding "isn't it?" to the end of a sentence is a tag question. Actually, because tag questions can be used to assert authority or ask permission, there is much of a difference between men and women's usage. As well, bouncy intonation is helpful to children learning their first language, which may explain why women's speech patterns vary so much.
There are a load of variables in studying conversational patterns outside of sex. For example, status can play as much or even more of a role.
ethnography--a biography of a culture; a study that pulls out what is typical of X group of people.

I'm probably missing some stuff here, so I'll go back and add as I have the time.

Jya ne!

Eeep! I've been...bad. I forgot to add the rest of my notes on Rday or Fday, and I have an entirely wonderful selfish reason for both. I SLEPT. I've been sick, and I SLEPT. SO THERE. :)

On another note, I got linked by Kismet-chan, so I link her back with a bunch of wonderful vibes. (((((((((FUSHIGI KISMET))))))))) I'll eventually link to the man who started it all off, Starrynight el Increible, but that'll be when I work up more of an urge to play with the template. I'm a HTML chicken still, no da.

Oh and Shiina Ringo ROCKS! At least, her early stuff, which is the only thing I've listened to. Me gusta.

Pulling myself away from this rambling...Classes!:

American Literature: We continued talking about Robert Frost poetry, and also discussed the Imagists. These were a band of people, led by Ezra Pound (who had his sticky little fingers in all parts of Literary Modernism), that made the main idea of the poem an image. These were sort of Westernized haikus, as they removed the symbolism and themes present in Eastern haiku, and as a movement it didn't last that long. However, there are three pretty famous poems that can be called "imagist": William Carlos Williams' "Red Wheelbarrow"; Wallace Stevens' "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"; and Pound's "At a Station of the Metro" (err, I think that's the title). Pound's is the most succinct of the three at two lines, and is simply an image; Williams' is, IMHO, rather depressing and begins to bring meaning back to the images it presents; Stevens' is the longest, presenting thirteen images, and comes closest to what someone would actually think of as a poem. There's also a great parody of it called "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Thunderbird." Mwee-hee.

Writing Fiction: Discussed the first chapters of John Gardner's book. You know, I'm definetly liking this class much more than the last one. Instead of lecturing and picking out points, he asked us our opinions of the book...and then we got to go through the first two chapters and find three quotes that we felt were cool. Then we went around the circle and read them. Basically, the "rules" (though Gardener isn't keen on actual rules) are:

• Details.
  
• A good educational foundation.
  
• Oodles of details.
  
• Write within your "genre"--realist, tale teller, yarn spinner. (Me, I tell tales. Woo!)
  
• Vivid details.
  
• Make up your own rules as you go along.
  
• Did I mention details?
  

We reviewed the Oncourse responses and how to do them, then broke up into groups and looked at the stories we were supposed to bring to class. I brought a copy of the "Kingdoms" Prologue, which has been collecting dust. We're supposed to do five stories or one long story throughout the semester; I'm gonna work on that one. Why? 'Cause it's a lovely little tale, and I don't have anything else on the burner 'cept the Unnamed Fantasy, which is a little too personal for writing class.

hmmm...that's it for now. OOh! It seems I managed to convert a big chunk of the English department to Terry Prachett. As it should be, methinks.

Jya ne!