Emblem

This is my emblem. I'm not super thrilled with it but it does combine some elements from my mystory. I love the beach and no matter how long I spend in other places California will be home. When thinking through some possibilities I felt that I had to include the beach or California in some way. I tried a few different things and settled on this one. The other element, my name, is in similar typeface and colors to Goggle. This represents the career portion of my mystory highlighting Web 2.0. I like the contrast between nature and technology and they way it doesn't quite fit. I also felt that using my name helped to offset the lack of presence in my family discourse section. My emblem has simply lines and uses only two elements. When I design things I typically like the clean lines and simple elegance. Throughout the semester I have noticed my tendency towards simplicity, my blog is black with some color highlights and my mystory is not overly complicated either.

WoW Character- Arravette- Level 15

I finally reached level 15 last night at 11:30. Wahoo! I struggled all week to reach level 15 and came to the conclusion that the only way to play WoW is with a friend. My character has died countless times and rarely completed a quest the first time without dying. Having a group or guild would have come in handy multiple times. One night my character had died about 5 times trying to accomplish a certain quest. I put the computer away to take a break and later on I came back and resurrected my avatar. When my avatar made it back to the quest site, I noticed all the guards that I had been fighting were dead, so I killed the main character and walked away. I saw on my chat log that another character had called me a jerk. I quickly realized that another character was on the same quest and had killed all the guards and I had swooped in and taken the prize. I didn't realize what had happened at first but I quickly apologized and asked the individual if he wanted help completing that quest. He said no. I felt horrible. If I had realized what was going on we might have been able to complete several quests together. Unfortunately the guy was so mad at me he didn't want anything to do with me. Lesson learned.

The Emblem

To be honest I have no idea what my emblem or wide image will look like. While reading the chapters on the emblem I tried to brainstorm and make connections wherever possible. Some of those connections are kind of weak and so I am still searching for the connections that make the most sense.

Ulmer's statement, "Everything that is said about the emblem is there as a relay for your own composition/design. You should always ask: What is that for me?" is a guiding statement for the emblem. The emblem can't just be a random picture that sort of, kind of, maybe represents, it must sum up the "look and feel of the mystory."

As Ulmer continued he encouraged us to make links so here are some of my thoughts- my family and entertainment discourses focus on the players- the players of characters in a book or the main players in a sports game. I also connected the concept of characters to my community discourse and the inclusion of Hollywood. One cannot deny that there are many "characters" in Hollywood. I also took the idea of storylines, narrative or drama from my community and family discourses. No sure what type of image this makes or even if it makes one.

Later on Ulmer states, "Their meanings, we could say in our context, are not those of studium, but of punctum. The punctum is what should ultimately drive the creation of the emblem so my random, stretched links may not provide the image I am looking for, this to me, goes back to the initial question Ulmer wants us to ask "What is that for me?"

At the end of the chapter I wrote a bit of scribbled notes of possible connections, hoping to stumble upon the one that involves the punctum.

Community- California heritage- part of my identity
Entertainment- classic narrative or book
Family- sports centered
Career- (still working on this one) web 2.0 maybe? a technological advance that allows my career to be relevant.

So I have classic and current- active and passive references, current and future, discourses that focus on me and those that don't include me. I have a lot of binaries? paradoxes? contradictions? Can I put these items on a scale and identify degrees? Maybe a timeline? I mindmaped these ideas and didn't really get anymore connections other than the ideas are home centered. I think I need to figure out and revise my Career discourse before I will be able to see more connections and determine an image for my emblem. I have already planned on putting my emblem on the home page of my mystory.

Entertainment

I moved my mystory to wix this week. I couldn't do what I wanted to do in iWeb so I moved on to bigger and brighter things. So here's my new mystory link- www.wix.com/dhwitmer/mystory

Ulmer Questions

1. With the mystory being so personal and yet public, where does audience analysis or audience adaptation factor in to the content?

2. As a person that hasn't fully entered into a career, what other methods or exercises would you give that would help me develop the career part of the popcycle?

3. With social media becoming the norm, how does it fit into electracy and the popcycle?

Baudrillard part 1

Baudrillard 's discussion of the real, simulation, and the pretend was really interesting. I had never really thought about the difference between simulation and the pretend. He says, "Therefore, pretending, or dissimulating, leaves the principle of reality intact: the difference is always clear, it is simply masked, whereas simulation threatens the difference between the "true" and the "false," the "real" and the "imaginary" (3). The terms are not synonymous and the pretend leaves reality in place and simply adds an additional level to experience.

Baudrillard adds to the comparison with the discussion on illusion. He states, "The impossibility of rediscovering an absolute level of the real is of the same order as the impossibility of staging illusion. Illusion is no longer possible, because the real is no longer possible" (19). The statement that the real is no longer possible is interesting since the book has to use the real as basis for comparison for terms discussed with the idea of simulation.

A third term that Baudrillard uses is parody and talks about it in terms of transgression and submission. "Parody renders submission and transgression equivalent, and that is the most serious crime, because it cancels out the difference up on which the law is based. The established order can do nothing against it, because the law is a simulacrum of the second order, whereas simulation is of the third order, beyond true and false, beyond equivalences, beyond rational distinctions upon which the whole of the social and power depend. Thus lacking the real . . ." (21). He goes on to state that "it is now impossible to isolate the process of the real, or to prove the real" (21). So my question would be, how can we define a standard or characteristics if it is unprovable and impossible?

The inclusion of reality TV, I thought, was very good. I have always criticized reality TV for not being real. Baudrillard asks, "What would have happened if the TV hadn't been there? More interesting is the illusion of filming the Louds as if TV weren't there . . . An absurd, paradoxical formula - neither true nor false: utopian. The 'as if we were not there' being equal to 'as if you were there'" (28). The last phrase is interesting since there is a reliance on the the TV being there in order for it to be in existence. We would not know the people (or characters) if the TV wasn't there and how can we really 'know' the people if they change because the TV is there? Seems very cyclical and very unreal or surreal? What would be the proper term? Pretend? The people are acting in a way which they would like to be seen, rather than how they are.