Friday, February 27, 2009

Link to Re-Membering Finnegans Wake

Re-Membering Finnegan

Hash for February 23, 2009

-Carly tells us about her Coffe Trader's memory theatre.

-Should the coffee shop people know these powerful secrets?

-Corrected test and come out as always (slightly dissapointed that not as well as predicted ;).

This is the 2nd Phase!

- Going through Carly's theatre - "Kickstand for Achilles, Agamemnon at bike rack, Apollo at the moon in the sky"

- How many novels were written from people's memory theatre? Who knows?
***Read Chapter 4 in Ong***

-True and genuine writing only comes about when the alphabet was invented. Perfected by Greeks. No vowels in Hebrew.
**** My license plate I always remember is NTMD8R***

Friday, February 20, 2009

Ram Testicles





Yes... Today was the day we remembered John Nay and his connection with the Testicles of a Ram. I've read the other two blogs that have been posted on the test so far, and it looks like their thoughts show that they have done fairly well.

I think I did too.

But if there's one thing I know about these wily Sexson Testicles, I mean tests, it is that they can feel good (hmmm... I mean you can feel secure in your grade ;) , and then they can come crushing down on you the day they are corrected in class. You're all like, "Yeah, sweet, I didn't know two or three....but I feel a low A coming on...." and then

BAM!

Fifteen minutes, twenty bickerings with the teacher over small technicalities in the verbiage used, fifteen sighs of disbelief, and one tear later..... you have yourself a beautiful, shining, solid C sitting before you.

Now, this doesn't happen to everyone....but please, don't feel crushed when you're the unlucky one that the testicle decides to go rotten upon. Just keep up your good attendance, get your blog rolling with stimulating thoughts and provocative images, and you'll be on your way to passing with flying colors in no time.

Just remember, a bad testicle isn't the end of the world.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Sick Day


I am terribly sad that I was unable to attend class today.... I'm feeling quite miserable and want to get better as soon as possible. I will look to the blogs of my peers to hopefully get some good info for what we will be testing on.... here is to a great test on Friday. Best of luck to all! -Chris

Friday, February 13, 2009

Happy Valentines Day!

Hash for February 13, 2009

- Discussing blogs about all sorts of wonderfulness.

- Kevin will talk on Yates's Chapter 2+3.

-Memory, imagination, and soul - Both connected by Aristotle and Plato. Can't have one without the other. Connected like the trinity.

-pg. 33: Memory is mental images of things past and imagination.

-"Imagination acts as your one hour photo for your memory."

-pg. 37: Faedras. "Memory....is the ground work of the whole." The ground work of the trinity. And if soul is you very essence, and memory is its groundwork, memory is given a HUGE role.

-"Knowledge is a statue that you use your imagination to create a cast around, then you use your memory to create a mold around the cast and keep its image there." I imagined a totem pole with a huge cast around it, then a lot of clay to get a mold around that. ;)

-Chapter 3: Roman memory knowledge put to the back shelves until two monks made it important again. Had same connection ideas with trinity and all, but they took it farther by asking why the memory to soul is important. Pg. 65.

Wonderful outline of the subject of the art of memory on Wikipedia....good for studying for test...... can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_memory

Yates is far more interested in Plato (influenced Renaissance) than she is in Aristotle (influenced Middle Ages).

Neoplatanism (important):a philosophical system, originated in the 3rd century a.d. by Plotinus, founded chiefly on Platonic doctrine and Oriental mysticism, with later influences from Christianity. It holds that all existence consists of emanations from the One with whom the soul may be reunited.

Freud says you can remember all the way back to your birth. Psychoanalysis is a memory analysis in its purest form. Jeung says you can remember everything before you were born too, all the way back through the human race.

Anamnesis - Recollection of everything that has been forgotten....EVERYTHING!

Gnosticism - Says there's a spark of divinity in us all (the epiphany)

Plato knows we fell from perfection into this nasty world of muck and sin.

Plato says your wings want to come back and that's why your shoulders itch when you remember something.

Lethe - river of forgetfullness

Mnemosiny - river of remembrance


Hamlet, Jesus, and...... uh oh, talking crazilyof communion and cannablism and the power of eating Jesus and becoming one with him.

Hamlet, Jesus, and Krishna - Remembrance

Chapter 2 in Yates is ended by Augustine. He realized memory is not just an item in persuading and working stupidly... it is a key component of reality.

- Augustine converted to Christianity... because he READ A BOOK!

Memory is essential.... look at his passages in Yates on pg. 47.

****HOMEWORK - REGROW YOUR WINGS IN MEMORY - AND BRING A QUESTION TO NEXT CLASS FOR THE TEST. Not TOO trivial and multiple choice.****

Books around:
-Commentary on Plato's Symposium on Love: Marsilio Ficino, tn. by Sears Jayne

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Sesame Street.... Stealing our Orality!

Hash for February 11, 2009

- Talking of Ong's Nine Characteristics of Orallity
-

- Connection with Ong's Third Point (redundant and copious):
-Talking of "The Song of the Moon Bone" from Kane and how it has to do with the repetitive nature of orality..... and and and of of of
- Sexson participated in the paoti meetings of the Cheyenne that started at 6 at night and ended at 6 in the morning in the early 70's.

- Connection with Ong's Fourth (conservative):
-Many new newspapers are now talking about things that haven't even happened yet because news that happened yesterday is old news
-McCain sitting with Thalia.
-Cliche's connect us to eachother.... the old connected to the young.
*****Blog - A whole conversation in cliche's*****


- Connection with Ong's Fifth (close to the human life world):
-People programmed by Sesame Street lose interest in information such as the list of names at the beginning of the Bible that make all of us literarians bored out of our minds.
-The only statistics that counted in Orality are those that were pragmatic and meaningful.

Connection with Ong's Sixth (antagonistically):
-Therpischore flyting and dancing.
-There is good flyting, praising however.

Connection with Ong's Seventh (Empathetic and Participatory):
- MUST participate and bring others into it.... you enter the world of the story and bring others in too. *Not like a book where you are by yourself.
- We are epically empathetic for the person who participated in the stealing of our pictures on the tac board.

Connections with Ong's Eight (Homeostatic):
- Adaptive to the things that are current to keep itself around and new.
- Snowman adapts to never melt from the board.

Connection with Ong's Nine (Situational, not Abstract):
- Everything is very concrete. Not fleeting.
- "The man was blameless" -literary
- "The man was beautiful in the way a warrior before battle is beautiful" -oral
- People see things that are useful to them, not stupid shapes or analytical processes.
-Purely seen or heard as the situation you are in, not anything else.

Talking about a movie he went to as a child:
"All the King's Men" - Heavy Politics - He thought it was a movie about an elementary school that falls to pieces and kills a lot of elementary school children because all he remembered was the quick scene where the kids die in this school incident. Oral thought process. The thing that sticks most is the most important part.

Kevin will start class talking about Yates when talking about Aristotle and Plato and what they have to do with soul and the subject of memory.

Important - pg. 65 - Ong

Act 1, Scene 5 - Hamlet - "Remember Me"

Jesus holding bread and wine - "Do this and remember me"

What does Krishna mean, what does Jesus mean, and what do the ghost mean when they say "remember me".

Monday, February 9, 2009

Suggestion for Memorizing Ong's 9

Thermostat - Erato - Oral tradition is additive rather than being subordinative. - "Temp was 63 and 64 and 65 and etc."

Chalk Board - Clio - Aggregative (meaning in groups and bunches) rather than analytical (trying to seperate into classes and order) - A thousand words on the board and their JUST A THOUSAND WORDS, you can not seperate them into groups.

Screen - Urania - Redundant and Copious. - Power point after power point after power point of constellations, so many words I can't concentrate!

Quiet Desk - Thalia - Conservative. - John McCain sitting with Thalia, giggling.

Overhead Projector - Polyhymnia - Close to the human life world. - Hymns connect me to the world of human life and beyond.

Old Brown Desk - Terpischore - Antagonistically toned, much flyting - Dancing and fighting

Tac Board - Calliope - Empathetic and participatory - Epic Empathy for the one who participated in the thievery of our pictures.

Snow Man Drawing - Euterpe - Homeostatic (Meaning the ability to adjust your internal environment to maintain a stable equilibrium) - The snow man can adjust his body to never melt from the board.

F Sign - Melpomene - Situational, not abstract. - Tragedy always pertains to a situation, not an abstract something or other.

Hash for February 06, 2009


-Someone continues to steal our pictures!

- Talked of cliche's that are nasty nervous visuals: nose to the grindstone, pick your brain, etc.

- Lynn did a wonderful list of cliche's, James did too but they were all personal to him and his family.

- Passing around the group list.

- Reciting cliches.

Book going around: The Gutenberg Galaxy - Marshall McLuhan

- Kevin will give us a talk next class about Plato.

- Keen-Kenning Ben is now going to do the nine muses before we get into the nine points of Ong.

- pg. 37 -
Thermostat - Erato - Oral tradition is additive rather than being subordinative. - "Temp was 63 and 64 and 65 and etc."

Chalk Board - Clio - Aggregative rather than analytical. - Baggage, not math, on the chalkboard.

Screen - Urania - Redundant and Copious. - Power point after power point after power point, so many words I can't concentrate!

Quiet Desk - Thalia - Conservative. - John McCain sitting with Thalia, giggling.

Overhead Projector - Polyhymnia - Close to the human life world. -
Old Brown Desk - Terpischore - Agonistically toned, much flyting.
Tac Board - Calliope - Empathetic and participatory.
Snow Man Drawing - Euterpe - Homeostatic
F Sign - Melpomene - Situational, not abstract.

Sesame Street brain washes us! Takes us out of the oral tradition!

Talking now of the words you use when you sneeze.

Hash for February 06, 2009






- Passing around a list for us to know what group we're in.

Books being passed around today:

The Singer of Tales - Albert Lord (passed around so we can talk about it)

The Gutenberg Galaxy - Marshall McLuhan

The Castle of Crossed Destinies - Ital Calvino


- Took a trip around the room for the muses

- Turned off all the lights and Zach told us his experience in High School with the Allegory of the Cave... teacher projecting his shadow on the cave.

"Noble Savage" - people more in touch with the true and not tainted by literature

Kain made this point, "Myth is the telling and the doing, literature is about reading of things people use to tell and do."

- Memory is the act of creation, building.... not just recalling. Not all memories are there because they "really" happened.... or does it even matter?

- We're talking about everyone's blog: Richard's blog about cliche's, Homeric Question in quite a few.

****Assignment - Produce an epithet for one other person in this class.****

- Proverbs are part of the oral tradition.

- Two characters proverbial in Hamlet: Ophelia's father (proverbial character)

- Expletives are for comedy and orallity.

- Wonderful performance by Clare from "The Tempest"

- Our great criticism of our chosen path in life/school is that it is IRRELEVANT (ah!).

- Make a list of the cliches you use all the time - ***WOULD MAKE A GOOD BLOG!***

- Chris told us of her rats and the memories they have.

- Anthropomorphizing - Making the animals feel and talk and think logically.

- In Kane, myth tellers are people who were around way before literature, and that they are connected with animals.
- Rats have been studied by scientists and it has been proven they make a "laughing" noise only when they are clearly enjoying themselves.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Controversial Top 50 People of all Time.... Perhaps I'll Memorize them... Perhaps not. ;)

Rank Name Religious Affiliation Influence

1 Muhammad Islam Prophet of Islam; conqueror of Arabia; Hart recognized that ranking Muhammad first might be controversial, but felt that, from a secular historian's perspective, this was the correct choice because Muhammad is the only man to have been both a founder of a major world religion and a major military/political leader. More

2 Isaac Newton Anglican (rejected Trinitarianism, i.e.,
Athanasianism; believed in the Arianism of the Primitive Church)physicist; theory of universal gravitation; laws of motion

3 Jesus Christ * Judaism; Christianity founder of Christianity

4 Buddha Hinduism; Buddhism founder of Buddhism

5 Confucius Confucianism founder of Confucianism

6 St. Paul Judaism; Christianity proselytizer of Christianity

7 Ts'ai Lun Chinese traditional religion inventor of paper

8 Johann Gutenberg Catholic developed movable type; printed Bibles

9 Christopher Columbus Catholic explorer; led Europe to Americas

10 Albert Einstein Jewish physicist; relativity; Einsteinian physics

11 Louis Pasteur Catholic scientist; pasteurization

12 Galileo Galilei Catholic astronomer; accurately described heliocentric solar system

13 Aristotle Platonism / Greek philosophy influential Greek philosopher

14 Euclid Platonism / Greek philosophy mathematician; Euclidian geometry

15 Moses Judaism major prophet of Judaism

16 Charles Darwin Anglican (nominal); Unitarian biologist; described Darwinian evolution, which had theological impact on many religions

17 Shih Huang Ti Chinese traditional religion Chinese emperor

18 Augustus Caesar Roman state paganism ruler

19 Nicolaus Copernicus Catholic (priest) astronomer; taught heliocentricity

20 Antoine Laurent Lavoisier Catholic father of modern chemistry; philosopher; economist

21 Constantine the Great Roman state paganism; Christianity Roman emperor who completely legalized Christianity, leading to its status as state religion. Convened the First Council of Nicaea that produced the Nicene Creed, which rejected Arianism (one of two major strains of Christian thought) and established Athanasianism (Trinitarianism, the other strain) as "official doctrine."

22 James Watt Presbyterian (lapsed) developed steam engine

23 Michael Faraday Sandemanian physicist; chemist; discovery of magneto-electricity

24 James Clerk Maxwell Presbyterian; Anglican; Baptist physicist; electromagnetic spectrum

25 Martin Luther Catholic; Lutheran founder of Protestantism and Lutheranism

26 George Washington Episcopalian first president of United States

27 Karl Marx Jewish; Lutheran;
Atheist; Marxism/Communism founder of Marxism, Marxist Communism

28 Orville and Wilbur Wright United Brethren inventors of airplane

29 Genghis Khan Mongolian shamanism Mongol conqueror

30 Adam Smith Liberal Protestant economist; philosopher; expositor of capitalism; author: The Theory of Moral Sentiments

31 Edward de Vere a.k.a. William Shakespeare Catholic; Anglican literature; also wrote 6 volumes about philosophy and religion

32 John Dalton Quaker chemist; physicist; atomic theory; law of partial pressures (Dalton's law)

33 Alexander the Great Greek state paganism conqueror

34 Napoleon Bonaparte Catholic (nominal) French conqueror

35 Thomas Edison Congregationalist; agnostic inventor of light bulb, phonograph, etc.

36 Antony van Leeuwenhoek Dutch Reformed microscopes; studied microscopic life

37 William T.G. Morton ?? pioneer in anesthesiology

38 Guglielmo Marconi Catholic and Anglican inventor of radio

39 Adolf Hitler Nazism; born/raised in, but rejected Catholicism conqueror; led Axis Powers in WWII

40 Plato Platonism / Greek philosophy founder of Platonism

41 Oliver Cromwell Puritan (Protestant) British political and military leader

42 Alexander Graham Bell Unitarian/Universalist inventor of telephone *

43 Alexander Fleming Catholic penicillin; advances in bacteriology, immunology and chemotherapy

44 John Locke raised Puritan (Anglican);
Liberal Christian philosopher and liberal theologian

45 Ludwig van Beethoven Catholic composer

46 Werner Heisenberg Lutheran a founder of quantum mechanics; discovered principle of uncertainty; head of Nazi Germany's nuclear program

47 Louis Daguerre ?? an inventor/pioneer of photography

48 Simon Bolivar Catholic (nominal); Atheist National hero of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia

49 Rene Descartes Catholic Rationalist philosopher and mathematician

50 Michelangelo Catholic painter; sculptor; architect

Hash for February 04, 2009


pg. 41 - Litany of the kinds of things people memorized when they had to memorize discreet items before they memorized poems and such.

- Lucius Scipio knew all of the people of Rome.

Books:

Memorize the Faith! (And Most Anything Else): Using the methods of the Great Catholic Medieval Memory Masters - Kevin Vost

The Singer of Tales - Albert B. Lord (the one I blogged on! :)

"Ten Cent Plague" - History of comic books!


-People are talking about the things they will see in their memory palace.

- Reciting of the muses with the class objects.... we're having people going around the room.

Erato - naked erato

Clio - old historian

Urania - projected onto the screen

Thalia - laughing at quiet desk

Polyhymnia - hymns from church on projector

Terpischore - dancing below polyhymnia

Calliope - no epic explanation

Euterpe - snowman of the calvin and hobbes

Melpomene - F is like swastica and she is tragic

- Underscore ESOTERIC in this class because we are all secretly in our own world here.

****ASSIGNMENT - Look in Yates's book and look at the images****

Go out before next week and learn 6 different languages.......riiight ;)

- One example of pg. 41 in Yates....Richard Burton knew so many different languages, he was a man who translated "Arabian Nights".

He wants to be entertained but he also wants us to memorize something useful.

-Check out Roger's blog and Sutter's blog to connect and get some good info on Groundhogs Day (the thing we spent all of class last time talking about).

Relating Prospero from Shakespeare's "Tempest" to the character Phil? in Groundhogs Day. Phil becomes a crazed perfectionist, micro-managing, obsessive compulsive...artist.

Read Ulysses.... "great stuff".

- Sexson read from an old essay he wrote about 16 years ago.... called Miranda's Attendants. Prospero's speech offended people with his crazy language. A line in a play composed of two nouns combined by an "and" and working to enlighten a third word. Great Parataxis.

-Phil Connors becomes a master magis by the end of the movie. He reaches the meaning of life. Everything is connected within the 24 hours you live you life each day. It's what we should all strive to achieve.

**** Why does Miranda, in thinking back to her first memory, think of women attendants who were helping her? Why did these women keep coming back???? Who really are these women who attended her? MUSES(Blog on it.) Instead of passively recalling, because Prospero made her recreate her memory within her. Remembers as much through her nerves as through her brain. She remembers her actual, historical as well as the mythical that Prospero is imbuing upon her.****

****How do we get to the mythic level when speaking/thinking of our thermostat and quiet desk and such?****

-The scientific method comes from the occult and ancient systems of memorization.

3 things that make Prospero's helping so powerful:

Pictorial, playful, and polymorphic

Allegory of the cave plays today as well:

-Movie Theatre

-Video Games

How might Plato's cave be seen again as a memory grotto?

-Talked about Samuel Beckett's plays like "Endgame" where the theatre and stage were set up like the inside of the stage.

-We would be able to tell Miranda who the attendants were and what they do.... (we see them around the room).

- By Friday, he wants a list of the 50 things we will be memorizing. Read chapters 12+3 in Ong with emphasis on 3, Kane prologue and 1, and Chapter 2 and on in Yates (pretty much what we've all should have been doing for the last few weeks ;).

Hash for February 02, 2009


Deep discussion on Grounhog's Day and the movie.

-Additive and Parataxis "word for word" linked from Ong's first chapter on blog.

- "Do you do things that you've done the day before?" "Can anyone do tell us about their rituals?"

- The overacting in the movie is one of the things that made it so memorable.
~ What is it about these movies, like "Karate Kid", that keep these around?

**** The Myth of the Eternal Return - Myth is that people believe things come around and around and around. ****

- The town in Groundhogs Day becomes a memory theatre.

- He's asking us for lines from our favorite movie.
~Someone in his other class says they watched, "Three Amigos" 112 times. He thought this was strange at first, then thought that this is what life is all about, finding something to repeat and go to over and over again.

- Lynn's blog gives us a list - a long list - of important, memorable things that have to do with violent. Memorable because of those things.

- Carly got maddelyns and remembers opening all them in class because when she did there was nasty green mold all over them. She was probably a little embarassed.

**** His requirement is for us to watch Groundhog Day. ****

- He's going to remember the things that she has told him and will use those things he remembers from the days past because he's been in the same day. The message of the movie is to, ***"PAY ATTENTION!"***

- There are plenty of things to discover in each day.

- Groundhog Day is highly important to this class... it must be because we're still talking about it. He's talking about the literary people who are sitting in the town around him, and when he asks them how they would like to live the same day over and over, they tell him that it sounds just like their actual lives.

- June 16th, 1902 - Bloom's Day - Leopold Bloom from Ulysses - A whole day in 850 pg. book that lives on in inphamy - Joyce made sure the world knew about this day that was so important to him so that people would remember it - Joyce made sure that every event actually happened in real life that had happened in the book.

Kyle's system will be the system we use to memorize the room and muse:

Thermostat is Erato - heat - (erotic poetry)
Chalkboard is Clio - old - (history)
Screen is Urania - stars - (astronomy)
"QUIET" desk is Thalia - loud - (comedy)
Overhead Projector is Polyhymnia - hymns on the board
Brown Desk is Terpischore - below Polyhymnia with the beat - (dance)
bulletin board - Calliope - out there - (epic poetry)
snow man - Euterpe - happy snowman - (song)
F symbol - Melpomene - swastika - (tragic)

By Friday he would like to know what the 50 things we will memorize are...

He says we should memorize the top 100 books of MSU.... type it into the MSU page and it would become highly useful for us in the future.

Monday, February 2, 2009

Happy Birthday James!





Hoorah to the legend!