You – getting punched, Me – in J’Paul’s Window

by Random Guy on Craigslist

So,

Monday night

Just after the football game ended,

I look out the window

Across the street

There you are,

Just sitting there

            On the sidewalk,

Clearly hammered,

            Chatting on the phone.

I thought you might be cute,

But couldn’t tell

            From where I was sitting.

Your friend came over,

I got up

            To check out the both of you.

I was going to cross the street,

            To say hello,

Then something happened.

Your friend grabbed your cell phone,

Threw it down

            On the concrete sidewalk (hard)

Screaming about something

            I couldn’t understand.

Then, she proceeded

To start punching you in the head,

Rapidly,

                        Furiously.

I thought you were in trouble.

You, however,

            Must not have thought so.

You started punching back,

From your seated position,

Continuing to take blow after blow to the face.

I found your ability to

            Defend yourself

            From the backed against the wall position

            So hot,

                        So sexy.

I really was impressed

            Once the punching stopped

            And the serious cussing out

            Of each other began.

While pulling your thong,

            Back down into your jeans,

You didn’t even miss one seconds’ opportunity

to scream at her,

            Wishing her death

right there next to

            Pizzeria Uno’s.

So amazingly attractive.

Wanna go cell phone shopping

            sometime?

interacting with poetry

There are distinct parallels between the Sunshine ’69 piece and the most recent assignment. Rearranging words and separting words lends to the overall meaning of the piece. The words and phrases that introduce Sunshine ’69 to its audience have been designed and arranged in a particular fashion, placing the words into a poem like consturction. They are merely words, phrases such as:

"Suitcase, map; 6 month vacation month;take it back;to  hippie nation; go on a trip; with orange sunshine; tune into sunrise; of sixty-nine; your license says; you’ve turned 16…"  

This is virtual tour, a scripted journey back into time… Taking a trip through the author’s memory through the arranged sequence of words. 

All of these words, just as past textual medias that we have examined, link the reader to a certain place and time. The grouping and separation of each word is entirely intentional. Similar to how we have taken the ordinary arrangement of local advertisements, and separated, linked and orgainzed the words into a free floating form of artistic expression, Sunshine’s intorduction stands as an interactive version of poetry.    

Bright Eyes and Fun Times

So I was seeing someone
when I bought the DARNED things.
Now he’s gone

                        And

I’m stuck
with two seats. I COULD try
and sell the one on eBay
and sit there uncomfortably,

by myself,
all night

next to                        
a random stranger. Or

I could sell the one here and sit there with
a random stranger
I would make him talk to me under this guise.

Don’t worry, I’m cute.

You gotta be cute too and-
you gotta send a picture. You want to go because you love Bright Eyes and fun times.

Not because you’re desperate for a date.
 

http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/w4m/110212498.html

Poem by Wes

(DO YOU THINK PEOPLE SUCK?)

Hey

African American

People all together

Men, Women, Juveniles, Even Infants

I’m a person

I’m back to chill

Now and then

Incredible energy

Need to play low key

Looking to be platonic

Something

Buddy anything

Nice to meet

to know

Screwing focused

working

normal kids get at me

dont be specific

race

dont discriminate

theres no need to be embarrassed

dont worry.

Here is website  http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/w4m/110084733.html

Poem

Original from http://www.craigslist.org/sfc/rnr/110211574.html

Reply to: pers-110211574@craigslist.org
Date: 2005-11-10, 6:20AM PST

I cook my own food.I dont want some dirty fat stinky chef jacking off in the can on break and then serving me food.I will buy a ford product tomorrow if I see that wonderful commercial.Fuck you chef wanker, nobody is going to can anyone for what some short order fry cook thinks or worries about.Go home and beat your fat hispanic wife cheffie boy.
no — it’s NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

 
 

110211574

Created Poem:

Cook my own food.
I dont want can food.
I will see that wonderful chef
Nobody is going to can
Fry!
Go fat! 
It’s ok….

Poetry

This is my attempt at transforming a personal advertisement into poetry.  I found this one on page 132 of the Matches section in the Washington City Paper.  My selection number is 901122; it was titled Green Jacket at Mercury Grill.   You were wearing a green jacket and talking to a female friend.  We smiled and kept smiling long after I passed you.  I wore a red collared shirt and a grey sweater, and was with a friend and her dog.  I came back later and we smiled some more but you were talking to a drag queen.  I finally got a drink as an excuse to meet you but you took off with your friend as we smiled one last time.  I’m ready to say hello.  I hope you will say the same. 

  1.  You were wearing a green jacket,
  2.              Talking to a female friend.
  3.                                      We smiled. 
  4.    Kept smiling long after I passed
  5.                We smiled one last time,
  6.           But, I am ready to say hello.
  7.                                       Hope you.
  8.                                        The same.

Playing Sunshine 69

      I played for a little while with Sunshine 69. You pass an interstate sign with a "69" which was symbolic of the project being centered around the year 1969. It starts with the perspective of a car going down road and you are driving it. If you move your cursor over signs passing by, you slow down some to see them. Otherwise, you pass them. I tried to click the other components of the car to see if they work. They initially didn’t until later. The perpspective turned into a swirling spiral with the Golden Gate Bridge. At some point in your drive the radio becomes active and the you can also click what I think are birds. Other parts of the car eventually become active which you can click. Clicking the map, takes you to map. You can pick various locations on the map. Like Afternoon, the narrative changes. There are several journals / diary entries you can read. I clicked through one that focuses on a american soldier’s time Vietnam. He had a girlfriend that had brother that was a Vietcong soldier. 

There are multiple medias in this project. There’s animation, text, and even a paage where you can play songs and recordings also. This piece wasn’t overly complicated. It was easier to understand than other hypertexts that I have looked at. I would say the main theme was of the piece was to give a perspective of life for americans in 1969 or basically the 1960’s in general. 

Form vs. Content with ‘Poetry Generators’

I thought looking at all of these different ‘poetry generators’ was pretty interesting. I had never thought of a Mad Libs-type generator to be something that would relate to what we’ve been studying in class, but it is, because it requires the reader’s interactivity to function.

Reworking the ‘personal ad’ into a poem made me think again about the importance of form with regards to content. A personal ad seems like a personal ad until you play around with the structure of the lines, the spacing, the indentation, and the formatting – then you can reconstruct it into a poem and give the same words, or content, entirely different meaning.

These ‘poetry generators’ function on a similar concept – they take random words, and place them in a way so that they form poetry. Even "Conversation", which does not use words at all, just sound, can be manipulated in different ways so that it has different ‘effects’ on the reader/viewer.

By using these poetry generators, we are able to play around with how different forms can give the same words entirely different meanings.

Weekly Post- All My creativity was spent on Media Analysis #2

On page 36 of Lev Manovich’s The Language of New Media, the variability of new media is discussed.  I related his discussion of new media back to the recent focus on hypertext based on several key passages in this section.  Manovich writes, "A new media object is not something fixed once and for all, but something that can exist in different, potentially infinite versions."  Before new media came about in the form of webpages and "flash" movies, once a literary work was published then the plot and story was finalized.  But often in hypertexts, they are so complex that the structure often mirrors a great circle as to make it almost impossible to discern where the narrative ends.  Therefore, the creator or author can easily add segments connected by images or links into the story with little or no alert being raised by the reader.  As a result, the elements of that hypertext are indefinetly variable.  One of the greatest examples of a new media/hypertext would be Wikipedia where a user can edit the material or update the subject.  This is in direct opposition, to a subscriber constantly having to purchase the Encyclopedia Brittanica every year.  Quite a contrast between 10 years ago and now.