Whats the most fucked up game your friends play?

GoodLuckLetsFuck · 1 day

I was really hoping that was an actual thing.

iamapsychoandwillmak · 1 day

Thank you for this. I always read the comments on these things before I click. Because fuck spiders.

thatguyinthesky · 2 days

I got into a top-tier graduate program that admits only 4 people a year in my area out of hundreds.

actonesceneone · 2 days

Someone accidentally most of that coke bottle.

prepschool11 · 6 days

Internships or work experience will be your best friend. It matters only marginally what your internship is in. The important thing is to have done some internships and to come out of college with enough work experience to get a job. The 'entry level' positions once you get out of college all require 1-3 years of experience. If you're lucky, you will land an internship that will turn into a job after you graduate (you don't really need to worry about those types until your junior or senior years though). In the mean time just focus on getting some work experience that isn't retail or customer service based. Almost every department has some, so you can even look outside your departments as a source of potential internships. As far as your major goes, which one you pick doesn't matter a whole lot if you're doing something in the humanities or social sciences. What matters is your ability to think critically and explain the relevance of your major to potential employers. Someone who can think and communicate effectively (written and oral) will be much more likely to get a job regardless of what they manifest in. That said, I would (and did) double major so that you have a broader set of skills.

A final note, don't be pressured into a major that you hate, simply because of the prospect of 'jobs.' You will probably be a poor employee if you hate your work. There are possible fields for everyone, some are more difficult to get into than others, which is why you want to do internships. Because 9 times out of 10, having a connection or knowing someone will get you into a field faster than muscling your way in.

eggy-weggs · 8 days

The poet Philip Larkin--a bald old man--referred to himself as "an egg with glasses"

gmpalmer · 8 days

It's interesting that you cite the modernists that you do as your initial inspiration for plain-spoken poetry. I also cite them among the initial group of poets that I fell in love with (except Stein, I've never liked her), just for the opposite reason. I've always enjoyed 'linguistic inventiveness' in poetry---the inverted syntax of cummings & his (mis)use of words, the fragmentation of Pound's speech, his rapid-fire imagery. I guess you could put Eliot in the plain-speech category, but I find him too formal and flowery for that. I've always classified the plain speech poets as people like Frost, Levine, WCW, maybe O'Hara & Ginsberg on occasion--people writing primarily in the lower register (not sure that's the right phrase). Although, I think I know what you're getting at--something one would want to say--that makes sense to me, I could put most of Eliot and Pound and Plath in that category. As much as I like Berryman and cummings, most of their poetry is not something it would ever cross my mind to want to say, even if I were using pretty speech.

Not to pester you with too many comments (but really to do just that), you said that the trimeter line best approximates in meter what American English aspires to. I find that really interesting. Not because we're taught to think of IP as the "rhythm of natural speech," but because with one beat less the pentameter turns to tetrameter, i.e., ballad measure, or the rhythm of songs & hymns. What's interesting to me is that if speech is 3I (iambic trimeter), then the rhythm of speech is just the truncated rhythm of song (4I).

gmpalmer · 8 days

Oh I've certainly been cutting things. Many a two page poem has been turned into 20 lines. I've also been playing with sequence/sectioned poems as a way to retain both length and compression. I'm working on a sonnet sequence as my "serious project" at the moment, but I'm having much more fun with the WCW type automatic writing.

You said that you think American English isn't represented by the IP line. I agree, we're often short, hasty speakers. But what I'm curious about is the premise that poetry ought to, in some way, represent or pay its debts to the English that is actually spoken. I've always thought that this was an interesting idea, conceptually, but it's one that's never really struck a chord with me as a writer. I'm curious what your reasons are for going that route.

gmpalmer · 8 days

I'm trying my hand at some prose poems/automatic writing, sort of in the style of WCW's Kora in Hell.

The Divine Comedy sonnets sound fun--are they sort of like Snodgrass's (de)compositions at all? I've been playing with Sonnets as well, trying to get that compression back. I went Whitmanesque for a while, and now I feel like I can't write anything decent in under 3 pages, so the sonnets are a nice exercise.

tallertwin · 10 days

Mission aside, wait until you know him better--I'd say spend a lot of time with him for at least three months, if not 6. A year of dating is even better. Of course, people have been married happily after being together for less time. The 'problem' if you will, is that marriage is a massive commitment, especially if you do a temple marriage--that's time and eternity. Do you want to spend the rest of eternity with someone you've only gone on four dates with? Even if you wait through a year of dating to get married (factoring out the mission time), you still have eternity to be with this person. You want to do it right, and, if we're honest, there are plenty of people in the world who can give off the "nicest guy I've ever met" vibe after four dates. Also, just a side note, I've never met this guy, but proposing after 4 dates goes under the "red flag" territory for me. Anyone who's willing to make that commitment after four dates clearly isn't thinking the issue through.

oldecrow · 11 days

I've always been a fan of the phrase "things are looking up" as a response to "how're you doing?" I can't help but imagine my dresser directing its eyes upward.

DamienCK · 16 days

I was really worried for a second when this link was already purple.

airjam21 · 17 days

http://www.poetrynw.org/

That was actually not what I thought it was going to be.

gmpalmer · 17 days

I'm a fan of Bat City Review, Seneca Review, Hayden's Ferry Review, and Poetry Northwest, which is holding a "poetry and science symposium" in a few days for anyone in the Seattle area.

gmpalmer · 20 days

I tend to go the friend way for most things. I have a few solid writing friends that I can run things past. We have our own (in)formal writing group set up with a fairly diverse set of aesthetics, which can be nice at times as it keeps you from going off the deep end, aesthetically. However, that same diversity can also be stylistically limiting if you're trying, for better or worse, to test those aesthetic limits. Though I find mostly that I only send things to them that I think are fairly "good" or that I'm stuck on--as there's no sense in sending them poems that I already know need what to do with--so they don't normally get to see aesthetic experiments.

banquosghost · 20 days

Epistemology

Descartes - Meditations on First Philosophy (I know you've got it elsewhere, but it belongs here as well)

John Locke - An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

David Hume - An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Kant - Critique of Pure Reasoning

In more recent Epistemology, you'll probably want

Wilfred Sellars' work on the Myth of the Given,

Roderick Chisholm (can't remember the essays at the moment, but they were on epistemic foundationalism and internalism)

Quine - Epistemology Naturalized, Two Dogmas of Empiricism (for his critique on the analytic/synthetic distinction, of course this could easily also go under Phil of Language or Phil of Sci)

Edmund Gettier - Is Knowledge Justified True Belief

OSUperson · 21 days

I know so many people with typewriters, or who want type writers, that this wouldn't even phase me if I saw it in a cafe as I was walking by.

Mozzsticks · 22 days

There's always Shakespeare.

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight;
Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,
Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait,
On purpose laid to make the taker mad:
Mad in pursuit, and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.

All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

ulysses_s_goblin · 22 days

Also, check out US News's ranking page for PhD programs in lit. It's a little dated, 2009, I believe, but the top schools don't really jostle around too much.

Also, in terms of resources, I can't really stress the department faculty pages enough. Go to the faculty pages of the places you're planning on applying and figure out who you want to work with. Then go out and read some of their articles to see if their style suits you. Then, and this one is more optional than the previous two, come up with questions and email them. There's no reason to not be in contact with these professors far before you ever apply. If they don't respond, they don't respond, but at least you tried. You don't have to be in contact with them, of course, but many applications will explicitly ask if you've been in contact with any of their professors regarding the application. That, and if you can actually start a meaningful, detailed conversation with these professors before hand, you'll get a deeper knowledge of whatever you talk about and a feel for whether or not you want to do grad work in English.

One last note, on emailing professors: try and come up with pointedly specific questions. Don't just email them and say "hey, what're your thoughts on Joyce." They don't have time for that. Try something more like "I was reading Joyce the other day and noticed X, I know you've done work on X before and was hoping you could offer your opinion." The possible problem with this is that if you're too specific they might either have nothing to say or it might require too much work for them and they'll just ignore it. Alternatively, rather than asking academic questions, you can ask them about the graduate program there and say that you're interested in working with them, and then try and get a feel for what they expect from graduate students that work with them. This is probably the better way, as it'll give you an easy way to transition into asking more pointed academic questions, but without making it necessary that you do so.

ulysses_s_goblin · 22 days

I'm just going to add a few more words on the personal statement. First, a problem that a lot of people run into is that the phrase itself is a bit misleading, as it should not be "personal" in the normal sense of the word. It's best not to begin your statement with amusing personal anecdotes, you should also keep your "personal" history to a minimum. Do not talk about loving books as a child, teenager, or college student--loving books is almost a prerequisite, they just sort of assume it of you, you don't have to tell them. In that vein, also keep your personal statement as recent as you can--no high school, no childhood, etc--they're admitting you as you are now, not as you were then. I work as a writing tutor at a large university, and those are the most common mistakes people make when starting out. You do those sorts of things when applying to your undergrad, but the PhD is a whole different ball game.

So if you don't talk about your personal history or your personal interest in literature, what do you talk about? The short answer is "What you want to study and why." The personal statement is really more of a personal essay on your proposed field of study. They need to know that you've been doing your research and that you already have at least a moderate amount of knowledge in the field. Think of your personal statement as another writing sample, another place for you to show off your ability to think about these issues--remember, you're signing up to become a scholar, so you need to demonstrate the ability to both write and think like one. You don't have to be a scholar already, you just have to show them the base set of knowledge and the ability to progress further (I should mention that the "base set" is a pretty high bar). Of course, this will certainly be more personal than the lengthy, official "writing sample" you submit. But you still want to avoid language that is broad and overly generic like "I really love Joyce." While it is personal, it's boring and not very informative to your readers--they probably love Joyce, too. You want it to be personal in the sense that no one else could have written it. That is, your interests and your set of knowledge are specific to you, so you need to display them as best you can. So avoid using broad statements unless you can back it up with an interesting discussion; e.g., "I really love Joyce's intricate use of language(s), particularly his interlinguistic puns in Finnegan's Wake; as scholar X notes ... I would like to study this aspect in further detail." Think of your personal statement as somewhere between a research proposal and a personal essay on your literary and scholarly interests. You don't have to know exactly what you want to study, no one is asking you to come up with a dissertation prospectus, what they are asking you to do is to demonstrate your ability to think. That's really the most important thing; to demonstrate to the committee that you don't have a passing interest in literature, but that you really like to think about it and engage with it on a scholarly level.

A note on tone: you don't have to sound pedantic and overly formal, it's actually a good thing to inject your own voice into your personal statement. However, you should be using the terminology of your field. If you were interested in culture studies or power critiques of Joyce, then you should definitely be using language like heteronormative, power structures, etc. You know how the English academy likes to write, so use some of their language--you're applying to become one of them, after all.

The last thing is that your personal statement should contain a section specific to each university you're applying to. In it you should talk about why you want to study there, and who you want to study with. Mention scholars and professors working there by name. And again, don't just write something like "I want to study with Prof X because he is a top Joyce scholar" write something like "I want to study with Prof X, because his work on topic Q regarding R is germane to my interests in P and Q."

TL;DR: keep the mushy "personal" stuff out, and demonstrate to the admissions committee that you can think like a scholar about your field of study.

blink-me · 27 days

I don't know why people are down voting you. While jdb12 is correct in pointing out that it is, strictly speaking, a false dichotomy--that is, there's no logical reason why we can't have both--you're also correct that in some cases it just isn't possible to have both. The problem is that OP's distinction is more of a sliding scale, I think. If you go too far in one direction it prohibits you from simultaneously taking the opposite style to its limits. That being said, I have a slight qualm with OP's word choice. Realism doesn't preclude creativity and vise versa. I might have gone with something like realism/surrealism, or literal/representational. I can't put my finger on the right dichotomy at the moment, but it's most apparent in the last pair of pictures that OP provided. The final "creative" image is in no important sense "realistic," sure it has mountains and people--but that's not what's at stake, it's the representation of those objects that distinguishes its style. And in that final creative case, it's not possible to attain the same level of representational realism as in the first "realistic" picture.

As for answering the actual question put to us. I think I generally prefer the creative side of things, I find it stylistically more pleasing. The only problem I've had with it is that the few games that I have played that go all the way creatively in terms of their animation also have poor game play, as it seems like they spent more time on art than they did on game mechanics. If anyone can recommend a game that looks like that last creative one, but has great overall game play, I'd love to play it.

fhinor · 29 days

There's also Project MUSE. It's a lot like JSTOR, except that it has a much more contemporary set of articles.

I believe you'll also need to be affiliated with a university to have access. If you are a student at a university, I suggest going to talk to the librarians. They normally have quite a bit of training in this area and can tell you which journals your university has access to and how to access them on the web.

Chundlebug · 1 month

Simply because you are under the influence of a particular author or tradition does not mean that you need to adopt the style of that author or tradition. To a certain extent, it does necessitate adopting the jargon of that tradition--if you're going to talk about Kant, you better use Kant's terms. However, there is no need to use Kant's syntax or his sentence structure. If you read the analytic approaches to Kant, rather than the continental, you'll find the style drastically different (and, I think, better). A certain type of philosophy, thought, or theory does not necessitate a certain type of style past a certain point. And I think many people agree that OP's examples are well past that certain point.

The thing that I find so frustrating about Butler, Bhabha, etc. is that they clearly have very good facilities with language. This type of style is a conscious choice on their part. A stylistic choice that is simply not necessary. In defense of this type of writing we often say complex thoughts require complex language, this is only true up to a point, but you don't have to look far to find counter examples of relatively simple writing with extremely complex thought behind it--John Searl and Saul Kripke come to mind.

kimprobable · 1 month

This is sort of what you're looking for, but not dealing with the difference of speech vs print. The process (act?) of mishearing a phrase along near homophonic lines is called a Mondegreen. Most often it refers to mishearing a song lyric, particularly in a way that will give it a different meaning; e.g., "She was a day tripper" can become "she was a gay stripper."

The poet Kenneth Goldsmith has a massive list of these by the title of Head Citations.

PoeticallyInclined

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PoeticallyInclined

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