Guess What's in my Pocket: The formation of a narrative.
Or
Re-purposing a particular material artifact in ways the maker hadn’t intended
(i.e. a stingray bicycle, a horizontal lawn mower, a washing machine pulley and clutch equals a "motorbike".

Shipka's Forum Prompt:
Wertsch and Narrative Formation

Post must be at least 250 words. Make sure you have posted by 5:00 pm Wednesday.

W. Chewning's Response ·  P.C. Paul's Response ·  A. Natvoitz's Response ·  C. Wychgram's Response ·  B. Bauhaus' Response ·  E. Piccirillo's Response

Y. Martin's Response ·  E. Sanchez's Response ·  S. Kibler's Response ·  G. Masters' Response ·  D. Panchwagh's Response ·  D. Wentworth's Response

C. Gatton's Response ·  P. Hartman's Response ·  M. deLauney's Response ·  A. Sheikh's Response

         All of this reminds me of a story...
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         "Beer Bong Billy," as he was called at the time, was an inventive young drunkard living in Ocean City, MD. Billy had constructed the mother of all beer bongs -- two funnels connected to one long tube using a Y-shaped splitter. Billy would stand on the sidewalk below, his thumb stopping up the hole at the end of the tube, as the beer bong was filled by fellow partiers on the second floor porch of an apartment on 28th Street. When filled to capacity, the beer bong held about six beers.

         One night, Billy was showing off his beer bong at a party to which a lot of strangers had been invited. He foolishly entrusted the strangers to fill his beer bong so that he could demonstrate his beer drinking prowess. As Billy stood on the sidewalk below, he was unaware that the young people above began adding unexpected substances to the beer filling his bong - hot sauce, dish-washing liquid, vodka, cough syrup, and who-knows-what other ingredients were added to what could have surely been a toxic mixture; some of Billy's new "friends" even spit in it.

         When the beer bong was filled to its colossal capacity, Billy made short work of consuming every drop that it contained, still unaware of its contents. After a few minutes of having ingested the concoction, Billy got a little disoriented and ended up falling asleep next to his refrigerator. Billy woke up a couple of hours later, as the crowd at the party was continuing to grow. He went upstairs, found his beer bong, and gathered a second group of strangers to fill it for him once again.
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         This is a true story; I was there.

         I constructed this story (or his-story) around Billy, always placing him before any others. However, what I didn't say is just as important as what I did say.

         I am NOT Beer Bong Billy. Billy was a guy I knew when I lived at the beach, and he was a hopeless lush. I also didn't say that I and several of my friends tried to tell Billy not to drink the beer bong. Bill wouldn't listen - he thought we were lying to keep him from getting drunk. I also didn't say that our friend, who was a registered nurse, kept an eye on Billy the entire time he was unconscious. Another friend had the phone in his hand for nearly two hours ready to dial 911. We really thought that Billy might die, but we also knew that if we called the authorities to this party, we'd all be in a lot of trouble. So, getting him medical attention was a last resort. In retrospect, our priorities were a little screwed up.

         Anyway, I wanted this story to be about Billy, because it's his foolish decisions and actions that are most important. I assumed that some people would think that I was Beer Bong Billy, which would have been fine as it would add a sense of personal interest to the story. Also, had I brought up the issues of Billy's friends being really scared while all this was going on, and how we didn't call an ambulance even though we thought he might die, the focus of the story would have changed from Billy to us. This is a history of Billy, not a history of his friends, but does leaving some parts out paint an inaccurate picture?

         Anyway, we, Billy's friends, didn't let strangers fill the beer bong the second time. We filled it with nothing but beer. Also, we decided that we wouldn't let Billy drink it. He went to the bathroom when it was just about full, I drank it, and we told him that he drank it then went to the bathroom. He had no idea that he hadn't.

A response to W. Chewning's "Who, What, and Where of Narration -- Why?" by P. Hartman
That story brought a tear to my eye...sniffle...poor Beer Bong Billy didn't get another go....

A response to P. Hartman's post by E. Piccirillo
hey phil- i was just wondering if you wanted to subscribe to the capital.

thanks. bye.

"Searching for Truth in a Narrative? ... Highly Unlikely... Yet All Versions ARE the Truth" a response to W. Chewning's "Who, What, and Where of Narration -- Why?" by P.C. Paul
I read the first sentence of Beer Bong Billy and already suspected how this narrative was going to go and closed it. I have just heard and seen too much to continue. I came back and read it surprised Billy didn't die in this narrative, it was my expectation when I read the first sentence. Obviously, several narratives could be created around the story of Beer Bong Billy depending on where Bill wished to place emphasis and what work Bill wanted the narrative to do. In answer to the question you pose to us as readers, Bill, I see this as being your version of the truth and you have made a conscious decision to make this text do particular work for you.

         "Is it inaccurate picture?" Yes, if you were in search of the objective truth. But you told us what the truth was in the second text, therefore the first text is a relative truth. Relative from the juxtaposition you chose to tell us the story from and the particular view you chose to show, sort of like watching a play or musical from the position of the audience and the position of standing in the wings of the stage. Each view is a truth but only a portion of the truth. This all plays into Einstein's theory of relativity. The truth depends upon one's position in physical space in most cases and the truth from one observation point will not be the same as another observation point but both positions are the truth. Hence a philosopher would argue that these are relative truths but relative truths are not the truth at all and that only absolute truths are truths because they are true everywhere in the universe regardless of space or time. Mathematics is one of the few disciplines that has absolute truths such a prime number. A number is a prime number is a natural number that has exactly two distinct natural number divisors. These 2 divisors are 1 and the prime number itself. This is an absolute truth because no matter where we are in space and time this will always be true.

         Of course, what I can, could, and do do is only bring in things that support my purpose (do the work I want to) and negate the rest, that is of course when I am writing non-fiction. If I was writing fiction I could dig really deep into really juicy private stuff, place my characters in another time and place, give them different names, write under an assumed name to protect myself, an deny everything. What's your purpose? Spin a yarn? Search for the objective truth? Maybe I have been awake too long and have lost the focus of this entire Blackboard post.

A response to W. Chewning's "Who, What, and Where of Narration -- Why?" by S. Kibler
Bill, you have the best stories. But, in the future, if you're going to tell an "I have a friend story..." you might not want to name him Billy. Just a suggestion.

         I had to quote you Bill because I can’t find a better way of saying this. I now find I am examining all kinds of text determining what work is the text doing, for whom, and how does the language do the work. This is now cropping up in my tutoring. I find sentences in other people’s text and ask myself what work is this doing? I am using it as a question for tutees especially when I think the sentence is a useless detail performing no work. I ask my tutee’s "What kind of work is this sentence doing?" When I receive the answer "I don’t know." I ask again, "Do you see how this sentence adds anything to your text?" "Is this sentence necessary?" "What does this sentence tell us about the world?" When I get the "I don’t know" or "It doesn’t do anything" or "It doesn’t tell us anything," I tell them to throw it out. I tell them if they can’t justify why it’s there then its useless. You’re the author and every sentence should be written with intent of doing or saying something.

         Academic papers drive me crazy now. These papers do not seem to serve a purpose other than writing something to demonstrate the author’s writing skills. The paper is "passed forward" to one reader with no other evaluation or test reader. The author gets the paper back with an A, thinks this is a great paper and submits the text to a journal. The journal then reviews these texts and few rise above. They are well written but they tell us nothing new about the human condition or something new about the world. These texts become too predictable.

         When one writes academically for the purpose of submitting the paper to a journal the paper becomes very different. The author now has an intended audience in mind and the article has to be the sort of thing that audience reads. The article will have to say something new that has not been said before otherwise the article is rejected. If the paper is accepted then the author gets into the headache of negotiating with their editors. The editors see the text in different ways and want to expand in places and delete in others altering the intent of the text. Now the author has to take a stand as to what really is not important and what compromises the intent of the article. A panel of writers once told us as aspiring authors, "Never give them what they want" but somehow this statement doesn’t seem to make sense because if you don’t give them what they want then you don’t get published. I have had editors take my work and intent and edit the text into how they wanted to spin it, changing the intent of the text to meet their own agenda.

         Songs are very peculiar especially corporate music. The text is written to offend the least number of people and to draw in the most people they can. In other words, they become so vanilla that anyone can read themselves into the spaces of the text. Corporate music producers want the largest draw to make the most money. The songs were rarely very personal. I have since forgotten the writer who wrote very personal stuff but you guys probably remember. Oh, Tori Amos, Sineade O’Connor, Jewel, Alanis Morrisette, (lyrics not music) and a whole host of others wrote really personal stuff. Also many of the writers in the post punk period were very personal. Corporate was afraid to sign them on because their writing was so personal they figured few people would identify with their messages. Little did corporate realize the lyrics that were so personal were the thoughts that we don’t share with other individuals for a host of reasons. Some things we do not wish to share or confront but when someone else has the guts to reveal them we realize I am not the only one who has had such thoughts or experiences and we identify with them. These writer become heroes and heroines because they had the guts to drag something out of the anxiety closet and expose it to the light.

         I have been accused of creating text that is too dense and too saturated in detail, but how can I reveal the truth without examining all sides. My texts become a search for the truth. One philosopher, I don’t remember which one, has said that all versions of the story are the truth. Of course this makes sense because each person sees an incident from a different perspective and different physical location, and enters with different pre-suppositions. Therefore, we cannot arrive at the truth without viewing all the different positions. We have to collect all the relative truths to arrive to the absolute truth and in many cases we can’t.

         I know I can write or talk about childhood memories and incidents knowing that they are now idealized and distorted in various ways from the day that they occurred. Case in point is a childhood memory that I wrote about the timely demise of Harry the bull. I could have chosen many different viewpoints because of my distance from that day. I chose to send a message about religion and God in the story. It would have been easy for me to focus on vegetarianism or one of a couple of other themes. I was reading may religious texts of other religions at the time and wanted to say something about the hypocrisy of those who wrap themselves in the cloak of religion but do not practice what they preach. The other point of the text was to demonstrate how one religion points at another and says "Yours is not the true God, how can it be if only our God is the true God." I am going to drop off right her because I know just this much the arguments are about to begin. The text itself was heavily manipulated from the viewpoint as a writer in order to add colors and textures to support my position. I had also just read Frankenstein and a few other texts from the same period of writing and played with the idea of the sun and the moon throughout the story using the sun as the angry male (Yang) and the moon as the nurturing female (Yin). Most of the text was true, but over-emphasized to illustrate a point. One of my peers who did a test read and did not know me very well at the time was hesitant to provide me with his opinion because he was afraid of offending or getting caught up into an argument. Now that he knows me better and knows that I can handle the criticism me may be able to provide a better test read. I was looking for someone who would make me anxious to get back to revising my text. His only comment was, "Gory." Evidently, he must have thought the text was a little over the top but that was exactly the point. I was trying to create an atmosphere where the reader would sympathize with the bull and view my sister as the villain. The bull had no choices in life. My sister did and was supposed to be the more intelligent of the two creatures. Knowing full well what was going to happen to Harry his treatment as a living thing who was going to be slaughtered should have been different.

         Another good case in point is an ex-lover. For good or bad those memories become distorted with time. We think what we say is the truth because we visualize the memories from our own viewpoint and not the viewpoint of the lover. The lover will have a very different story to tell because we cannot see ourselves. Within this is narrative is also the circle of conflict. Many times it is difficult for us to step outside that circle and see that we are wrong in the conflict or that we have even been drawn into the circle. Here is my case in point. I was a salesperson in a computer store. One day a customer walked in and was there with the objective of having an argument. We were well trained to recognize this circle of conflict but many times it was easy to fall back into an ignorant position and not see that the customer was attempting to draw us into the circle of conflict. This particular day I was not very observant and allowed the customer to draw me into the circle. Another salesman who was not involved quietly walked up to me and touched my elbow. That caused my mind to snap back to reality and recognize the customer had drawn me into the circle of conflict and I was feeding exactly what he wanted: an argument. When the salesperson touched my elbow I suddenly snapped out of the circle and could view the situation objectively, from the other salesperson’s vantage point. From that moment on the conversation changed quickly and the customer left defeated because I realized I was being drawn into an argument and I refused to entertain his need.

         One last personal text and I will change gears. I wrote a text maybe two years ago as a personal narrative or memoir for the purpose of submitting to a journal but it became a personal exploration as a justification of the cause of my best friend’s death many many years ago. I had to resolve for myself whether the incident was a matter of a string of poor choices or a matter of suicide. Only my dead friend can tell me the real truth and we know dead men tell no tales. Whether the text resolved the question I cannot tell. I may have twisted the text to provide me with the answer that I was most comfortable with hearing. Again this was a matter that I had greatly distanced myself from and was willing to open the closet to try to unravel the truth. Unfortunately, my second friend who was behind him on that fatal motorcycle trip is still not willing to examine that moment in time because of the trauma involved. He is the gatekeeper to any iota of the truth and it seems to me he is dead set on taking the truth to his grave with him. It could be that I wished to find the motorcycle itself the villain in the story and not taint the name and memory of my friend or it could have also been that I am still not willing to accept the cold truth. Because of the distance I could look at the incident through logic and not ethos therefore I believe that I arrived at the truth that I can live with and for me it is the truth without distortion.

         The most fascinating of all text for me is the oral tradition of storytelling. There are so many fabulous stories people have shared with me over the course of a lifetime and most were by people that would never think of writing them for any particular purpose. Stories told by WWII vets, stories of depression children growing up, stories of various time periods, places, and generations.

         I accidentally hit on one in the last class. It appeared that no one understood the object that I drew on the sheet of paper not only because it was a poor drawing but evidently the object was a regional thing and possibly restricted to only a few towns where I lived. The object was a Schwinn Stingray bicycle from the period of the late 60’s early 70’s (not an Apple Krate, Orange Krate, a Lemon Peeler, or a Pea Picker, named by their colors, because they were expensive--$115 in 1968 and highly desirable--cool). It didn’t have to necessarily be a Schwinn nor did it have to be necessarily be called a Stingray. I used this name because of its national recognition across a generation. I know people recognized it as a bicycle. But not as a homemade motorized bike or what we called a motorbike (this is a modern day version and less crude.) We called them motorbikes to differentiate them and categorize them separately from mini-bikes, mini-cycles, motorcycles, motor scooters or scooters, and mopeds. We didn’t even have mopeds as they came later and motor scooters were rare because they were usually Vespas and that craze died before this period.

         What we did was rip a huge pulley out of a washing machine and the v-belt clutch they had. The center of the pulley was drilled out using a drill bit until it was soft enough that the hub could be chiseled off. The pulley was mounted to the rear wheel of the bicycle with a few bolts and blocks of wood were inserted between the wheel spokes to create sort of a pressure plate to firmly mount the rear drive pullet and prevent it from turning. Next one had to find a horizontal shaft gas engine from a old fashioned rotary blade lawn mower now extinct because the blades were so dangerous. The engine was mounted to the bike using a piece of angle iron preferably with a great deal of holes in it. The angle iron was mounted to the bike with two bolts drilled right through the frame of the bicycle. The engine would dangle in space because of its own weight at the top so the way we fixed this was to mount a large hose clamp around the engine muffler and around the frame of the bike. The automotive hose clamp was screwed down until the top of the engine was real close to the frame. This was how the engine was mounted. The drive belt was an automotive v-belt typically found in an automobile to drive an alternator. The throttle was the tricky part. At first many of them didn’t have an arrangement which meant the operator rode with one hand on the throttle of the engine and one on the handlebars. Quickly we learned this was too dangerous. We got smart and scavenged the twist grip three speed gear selectors from old English racer bicycles for engine throttles. This meant that the operator could hold the handlebars with two hands. The braking problem was never resolved. The engine was used as the brake so these things were extremely dangerous as I look back on them now. Most riders stopped them with their feet resulting in replacing an awful lot of sneakers. As far as speeds these machines averaged from 18 to 45 mph. There was one made out of a 26" bike with a 31/2 hp engine that clocked in at 62 mph.

         Were I lived we were five miles away from an old military airfield called Mitchell Field near Roosevelt Field. Roosevelt Field being the field Charles Lindbergh took off from in the Spirit of St. Louis for his famous transatlantic journey to Europe. Actually that is a slight distortion in history because he actually took off from a location a little further east than Roosevelt Field. He took off from the space Fortunoff now resides on Old Country Road, Westbury, N.Y. Mitchell Field was located in the Hempstead Plains and the Meadow Brook near Uniondale, N.Y. and East Meadow. Mitchell Field has less of a history. Now it is home for Hoffstra University, Nassau Community College, the Nassau Coliseum, and many other occupants. Mitchell Field had a huge dirt area full of trees and hills where we carved out trails for riding. There were also a few old airplane runways that we could top out the motorbikes and have a car pursue them to determine their top speeds. One guy was crazy enough to make a motorbike out of a twenty six-inch wheel bike with a four-horse power motor. This bike was rumored to clock out at 63 mph, which was very likely. I owned a mini bike known as the Mini-Motocross made by Bonanza that topped out at 60 mph and hit top speed in 5 seconds which scared the shit out of my older brother when he attempted to clock me driving a 67’ GTO with a three speed. The car was quick. Real quick. But the bike was quicker and it would take some time to catch up to me.

The Bonanza Mini-Motocross

More Pictures of the Mini Motocross
Bonanza Mini-Motocross (mine did not have lights)
Click here for the sound of the Hodaka engine.
NOTE: The bike shown in the video is NOT a mini motocross. It is a Bonanza mini bike but it is an earlier predecessor of the mini motocross.

         Apparently, the construction of motorbikes was a regional thing restricted to particular neighborhoods. I know we had a lot of them in my neighborhood, but that may have been because one person learned from the next how to make one. All of these motorbikes were very different from the next because each person would come up with a different design to eliminate a specific problem.

         This is a link showing some pictures of the place where we once rode. http://www.hempsteadplains.com/hp2q2000.htm The pictures were taken in 2000. One of the pictures shows the Nassau County Hospital that my older brother installed the elevators in that would be the single building not the twin buildings. I think in about 1974 or 75’ it was officially declared wetlands and a bird sanctuary protecting it from over-development.

2) How does the process of selecting (and deflecting) key players (those who act/those who are acted upon), and events help the narrative to do specific work in specific ways?
The author decides which particular story and viewpoint one chooses to reflect upon or highlight. If I was to tell the story of the post hippie day of a 24 hour concert held in the Roosevelt Raceway, a trotters track now long gone back in 1974 or 75’ I could focus on the groups that performed that day. I could focus on a tender teenage love story and the heart break of a young man’ (my heart and my first girlfriend). I could paint the picture in such a way, say from her viewpoint where I was the bad guy or I could paint it such that she was the bad gal. I could paint the picture to emphasize a time absent of AIDS and free love. I could paint it from the position of a mature adult looking back and display what a bunch of jackasses we were and only a few of us were lucky (not smart enough) to calm down, gain some common sense, and reach age 25.

         In other words, I could create a moral about bad choices. I could paint the picture of a true account of a bizarre situation where everyone was so drunk and stoned no one cared or thought twice about anything. Case in point, women entering the men’s room to do their business because of a backup in the ladies room and the men just shrugging their shoulders. This was real weird because this place was old, maybe from the 30’s or earlier. The men’s room didn’t have urinals but fixtures that were more like long bathtubs, hence everything was exposed to everyone except for the toilets that had walls and dividers. I could focus on the drug abuse, the taking of drugs, tripping, or a dozen things that would go on at such a concert. I could tell some really way out stories where I would be cited as being pornographic and untruthful. The problem is fact is much stranger than fiction. I could specifically go out of my way to paint the truth and be cited for lying. I could outright lie and be cited as telling the truth. So depending on what work I wanted the text to do would decide what scenes to bring in, what people to bring in, how to portray them and how to portray myself in order to deliver the message I choose. In doing so I would choose not to show other scenes, leave people out, or bring them in, portraying them from a different perspective to support a different position. Even if I tried to tell the exact truth of this event it would be impossible for many many reasons. Such reasons would be distortion by time, not remembering all the people in our small circle of friends who were there, to the point of not even remembering the last names of major players, plus distortion from the influences of alcohol and illegal drugs.

         This Link, Long Island History, is a web page devoted to links to other websites in the pursuit of Long Island History.

3) Another thing you might want to consider is whether or not trying to guess how a colleague uses a particular material artifact in ways the maker hadn’t intended, or how playing a game like 20 questions might count as a narrative. In other words, how might working together to ask questions, and/or not wanting to waste questions play a part in narrative formation?

This is a difficult question not easily answered but I’m game and I’ll try. First, both of these activities in class that day were oral narratives or dialogue, even arguments because we were all trying to arrive at the truth. The game was similar the old game show "What’s My Line?" where the stars were only allowed to ask 20 questions to determine what someone did for an occupation. Evidently, Bill has had a lot of experience with this because he jumped on the animal mineral question right away.

         We talked among ourselves in order to not waste questions and to make decisions as to which questions would provide more information or clues. I was writing down the clues because I knew I would begin at some point to loose track of them. The part that it was edible was what was throwing me off. The whole event could be weaved into a narrative text if someone chose if the author could see a way of leading to a dramatic climax, an anti-climax, and say something new about the world, about human condition or show the universality of the human condition. If there was some sort of stake involved in the game say a grade, lunch, or twenty dollars, the tension in the room would conceivably be much higher. The author could use internal reflection of themselves or any one person in the room to create the narrative or show internal reflections of several of the people in the room.

         The author could add body language to the text to reflect various personalities of the players in the room and set up rivalries and alliances. Every utterance could be used in context or out of context to do exactly what the author wants if one knows how to manipulate the language to suit their own agenda or purpose. Another way to weave the dialog of the day would be to use a so-called objective narrator who we are to believe has no agenda other than recording the moment in time: a historian. We could be led to believe that what the narrator says is the truth, but it is only the narrator’s truth for even the narrator has a bias when trying to be unbiased. In science and philosophy where people search for the objective truth have built-in biases that creep in as hard as they try to control them. We are all human and the biases will crop in regardless of how objective we try to be.

         I tried to work with the question about guessing how a colleague uses a particular material artifact in ways the maker hadn’t intend and found that my text went down a road I didn’t want to go down so I made a conscious decision to wipe it out forever never to be seen or heard from again. By using a tape recorder with a special microphone, all the dialog could be recorded, transcribed, and manipulated to do specific work:spin a yarn. With a creative mind and a strong command of how to manipulate language I am sure could weave a text that would sound similar to what was said and could honestly or dishonestly capture the atmosphere of the room.

         How about if the invisible dog was actually a super-intelligent life form from another dimension whose race created the entire Earth as a huge super-computer to determine what the meaning of life, the universe, and everything in it was for. Oh, as far as the answer, its 42 and the dog knew that. The dog as we call him or the super-intelligent from another dimension as it knows itself is actually trying to resolve what the question is because the question "What do you get when you multiply 6 x 7" is not deemed as very exciting for prime time television.

         What is really frightening is the energy of that conversation is now in space somewhere and conceivably fell through a wormhole into another dimension and right on to the table where two planets are having peace talks and in their language the dialog would be deemed as the largest insult ever delivered in their history. Both planets decide to go to war with us, send out their entire population in space ships, pass through the wormhole, and enter room FA 018, the dog yawns and the entire population flies right into the mouth of the dog never to be seen again because they underestimated the size of the creatures on planet Earth. How’s that for a yarn?

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"As Islands in a Sea of Stupidity... We Have to Send Messages in a Bottle " by A. Natvoitz If you ever read the comic strip “Dilbert” or seen the show “The Office” you can begin to comprehend what it’s like to work at 8888888... the micromanaging, dufus/a-hole boss, the ditzy sales girls dressed in cleavage revealing butt skimming clothes, the off the wall, shockingly out there customers, the projects that are only assigned to you because there is no monkey (except your co-workers) in sight, the constant feeling that you are the only one working.... It would be too much to bear if you couldn’t find a way to laugh at it....

         Our (myself, our secretary -who has a masters?!?!- JUDD, and my two co-workers TJ and Calhoun) have a way of dealing with the madness, the stupidity, the absurdity and the frustration that surrounds us on a daily basis is to email each other the details of each event. The emails, which at least one of us sends at least once a day, allow us to tell the “you wouldn’t believe what happened/what he/she said” stories without the risk of being overheard. Plus, it gives us a chance to put those English major skills to use, since we certainly aren’t using them for work purposes. Each email is a little story of stupidity that we felt just had to be shared, appreciated for its comic value, and vented before someone does something rash, like scream “file it yourself! I didn’t go to college for this!”

         The key players in each narrative are usually the author of the email and one or more of the buffoons that we work with, depending on who’s idiocy was to blame for the incident being described. Of course, they are always the ones that act, and we are always the ones that are acted upon. The stories wouldn’t be funny if the fact that we are completely at their mercy wasn’t reflected… we are just innocent bystanders in the stupidity drive by shooting that is our office. We usually use nicknames, to protect ourselves in case the email is somehow intercepted and the person who does so is actually capable of reading and comprehending what we wrote, for everyone... which gives the emails a lil something extra in terms of humor. The sales reps are “the bops” (boobs on parade) or a variety of silly names like “princess high-five”... the editor of 88888888 (who works from home because our boss, 88888, doesn’t think she fits the “image” of the company he wants to present in the office) is “frumpy”... 88888, the account manager, is simply “the road ends here” (because she frustrates JUDD by giving her all her work, sometimes to the point where she wants to scream this at her)... and most importantly, the boss, 88888, is “the 8888” or any other variation on his name and something meaning stupid, infantile, or self-centered that we can think of.

         The impersonal format, along with the nick names, and, of course, the almost too crazy/stupid/annoying to be true things that take place, or are overheard, makes for extremely funny lil narratives. Whether I’m writing one or reading one they never fail to make me crack a smile, and that is exactly what you need if you work at 8888888... otherwise you just might loose your mind.

         I only had a few in my email... but I’ll give you a little taste:

         JUDD on the 88888’s stingy nature:

         “88888 is out on vacay starting tomorrow--it'll be a peach around here... peach-infused vodka party, I meant to say...

         Oh, and we get to work the 8888888 and found out that we can stay at the hotel for freezzies. ...watch, we'll end up having to share a room. "Uhhh, didn't all of you want to stay in the one-bedroom? I thought you liked sleeping on the floor..." FYI-- he threw out my breakfast last year and my lunch stank. No veggie sandwich to be had. I think I got a cookie and a warm coke.”

         Conversation between two of the bops, overheard by Calhoun:

         I'm trying so hard not to react...

         MW is talking about her china order with MT. She's registered for Lenox and was "so into" the Vera Wang for Wedgewood designer set that is out now.

         MW: "It's beautiful. White with these initials--MW--all around the edge. So I love it and told my dad about it. He was fine with the price, but when I showed him the initials and said how it was just so cute with my initialing all over it he said: 'well, you do realize it says 'VW' for Vera Wang--not 'MW'."

         MT: "Oh."

         MW: "Yeah, so now I'm not into it as much. I mean, why would I want her initials on my china, you know?"

         MT: "Oh, yeah, no you don't want that."

         OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG

         Okay, they left the room so I can smile and laugh to myself now.”

         JUDD, describing the phone conversation she just had with a subscriber who was nuts:

         Crazy: "I move. I have new address from one year." (look-up sub, expired last November, she didn't understand why she didn't get magazines since then)

         Me: "Okay, I have corrected your address."

         Crazy: "YOU SEND ME ISSUE EVERY MONTH, HHHHOOOOKAY?"

         Me: "Well, it's every-other-month because that's how often we publish."

         Crazy: "I want issue every month. The subscrrrription is for one year."

         Me: "Right, but we only put out a new issue every other month. There are six issues in a year."

         Crazy: uncontrollable laughter, followed by: "Hooookay! Thank you"!

A response to A. Natvoitz's "As Islands in a Sea of Stupidity... We Have to Send Messages in a Bottle " by P.C. Paul
Did you know that because of the wave phenomenon in Physics a message in a bottle thrown into the ocean from a shore never goes anywhere except back the same shore it came from?

         S. Natovitz said, “...the constant feeling that you are the only one working.... It would be too much to bear if you couldn’t find a way to laugh at it...” Yes I know this feeling all too well at Pep Boys. We have a new saying that appears on the intranet posting forum which says, “I will excel to the same mediocrity as my fellow employees.” I didn’t find it laughable any more and let the manager have it right between the eyes the other day on his own sales floor. I run the entire parts counter by myself every Sunday because no one else will work on a Sunday. This means serving customers, picking parts, picking parts for the shop, and answering phones. Once again he came to me and said I have to answer the phone more promptly. I said to him, I am taking care of the customer at the counter, on the entire sales floor, picking the parts, feeding the shop parts, and answering the phones promptly, and getting you 8 points if a mystery shopper calls by saying, Thank you for calling Pep Boys, this is Chris, how may I help you,” knowing full well that this is your store and when customers complain that we do not have things they want or need, I tell them speak to John Klink, it’s HIS store, they can’t even be bothered speaking to you, and for this you thank me by cutting me back to 15 hours a week with no raises, no promotions, when I was a manager of an Auto Parts store, wrote the auto parts catalogs for one of the largest importer of auto parts in the country, Beck/Arnley, I have no benefits, no insurance to speak of, and I am supposed to roll my spastic eyes and say “Oh I am thankful that I have a job and get paid X dollars, when you know that I can do your job better than you can with your Pre-school mentality… I did not stop, he walked away onto the sales floor and I continued, “And with what you pay me, you seem to think that you will get more work from me considering I am not even given a chance to go to lunch which is a State mandated law but you expect more, well you’re not going to get more and that is how it will be until you run down your own store and as with all general managers when Inventory time comes around again, you like every other general manager that has walked in though that door will be looking for another job because your shrink is too high and as with all general managers you come and go like the wind.”

         As far as your English skills this exactly what my father had to say about my seeking another degree, “that I could go out and get a job as a secretary.” Things were already bad before he said this but it was the last straw I will NEVER speak to the man again because he is a “know it all.”

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"The Rules Shape the Game" by C. Wychgram I think a significant part of working together in a question game like we played in class was that the limited number of questions forced everyone to assume a role as part of a collective, whereas when the number of questions had been unlimited (as in the item re-purpose game), we tended to shout out random answers. During 20 Questions, certain class members assumed the roles of speakers, recorders, brainstormers, and audience. These roles naturally shifted during the course of the game. It was generally discouraged for a brainstormer to shout out a guess without conferring with the audience of fellow students to determine whether the idea was strategically beneficial to the group. Recorders, as a specialized subset of the audience, usually caught duplicate questions before they were asked. So, most of the questions were the product of a complex group consensus before they were routed to a speaker who would make the official statement. Interestingly enough, when asked the next week, the class seemed to remember only speakers and Shipka, reducing the narrative to a simpler story involving a clear antagonist and protagonist.

         The item re-purpose game had several rounds, so I think it would be more appropriate to compare a single round of the item repirpose game to the single round of 20 questions. As a mentioned before, people tended to shout out random answers, which were seized upon and refined by other players if the response from the owner of the item seemed favorable. In this situation, players competed against each other and the owner of the item played a much less dynamic role than in the case of Shipka and the pickle relish. The protagonist would be whoever finally guessed the correct usage of the item - even if their ideas had been built off of the ideas of others. So there was still some cooperative element in building off others, but it was to a much lesser degree and there was little conference among players. However, there were ways of gaining status within the game other than a correct guess - some players had the advantage of knowing more people in the class, and therefore were more likely to know the owner's history that could relate to the item. These players became central nodes of the narrative, and tended to speak more. Another method of "winning" was to come up with clever or amusing answers, even if they were completely wrong. So, I think we might remember more key players from that game, as there were more ways to "win."

         Just a thought - I wonder if the item re-purpose game narrative would have progressed more like the 20 questions narrative if played by members of a more collectivistic group? (For instance, a group of close friends.) In a school setting, our default reaction to any challenge is likely competitive, focused on goals and power, whereas in a friendlier setting we may tend to seek approval and resources from our in-group. The tighter constraints of 20 questions in essence transformed our class into a collective "us" vs. "them" so individual competition was redirected.

         I’m sure we’ve all experienced group work in which there was not as much cohesion, though - probably because loose constraints do not sufficiently motivate most people to set aside individual ambition. Student narratives that examine group dynamics, such as evaluations of class partners, often focus on the personal qualities and faults of fellow members while ignoring how the “obvious” constraints of the task (time, materials, etc). The same thing goes for the “blue sheet” student evaluations of teachers - perhaps a lecture teacher who seemed boring was constrained by the time limit of the class, or something like that - but there’s a tendency to assign oversimplified “protagonist” and “antagonist” labels, losing the people, conditions, and events that shaped the main characters.

"What's My Line? Recontextualized" a response to C. Wychgram's "The Rules Shape the game" by P.C. Paul
C. Wychgram said, "I think a significant part of working together in the 20 Questions game was that the limited number of questions forced everyone to assume a role as part of a collective, whereas when the number of questions had been unlimited (as in the item re-purpose game), we tended to shout out random answers."

         This is before your time so you may not be familiar with it. It’s almost before my time also but there was a game show called "What’s my line?" where the I think they were famous stars had to guess in 20 guesses what the visitor’s occupation was. It was played pretty much the way we played 20 questions except I think there were only 4 stars guessing.

         "They would converse as to what they thought was a good valid question so they were formulating a strategy and a plan. During 20 Questions, certain class members assumed the roles of speakers, recorders, brainstormer’s, and audience."

         Oh you are good! I was recording because I couldn’t keep all the legitimate questions in my head and I was looking for a pattern. Once we knew it was both living and dead things got interesting because that’s when we started to hone in on something edible.

         "These roles naturally shifted during the course of the game." As is expected.

         "It was generally discouraged for a brainstormer to shout out a guess without conferring with the audience of fellow students to determine whether the idea was strategically beneficial to the group. Recorders, as a specialized subset of the audience, usually caught duplicate questions before they were asked. So, most of the questions were the product of a complex group consensus before they were routed to a speaker who would make the official statement."

         This was a team environment working towards one goal. Sarah emerged from the group as a spokesperson, why? Who knows, who cares. It was a necessary function and she took the lead.

         "Interestingly enough, when asked the next week, the class seemed to remember only speakers and Shipka, reducing the narrative to a simpler story involving a clear antagonist and protagonist."

         An overly simplified story. I know I am wearing down and was quite tied up with the complexity of Wersch argument between that and working on designing four more projects all at the same time my mind is working 24 hours a day right now.

         "The item use game had several rounds, so I think it would be more appropriate to compare a single round of the item use game to the single round of 20 questions." Agreed.

         "As a mentioned before, people tended to shout out random answers, which were seized upon and refined by other players if the response from the owner of the item seemed favorable. In this situation, players competed against each other and the owner of the item played a much less dynamic role than in the case of Shipka and the pickle relish."

         I can’t remember now, did the mediated items come first and then "Guess What’s in my Pocket?" If the items were first, I think structure and rules were set up in the next game because we had no real structure or rules in the first.

         "The protagonist would be whoever finally guessed the correct usage of the item - even if their ideas had built off of the ideas of others. So there was still some cooperative element in building off others, but it was to a much lesser degree and there was little conference among players."

         Here again as I mentioned if 20 questions was imposed the structure of play I think would have changed because the other way one keeps plugging away until the answer is revealed or the gamers just get bored because it’s too hard.

         "However, there were ways of gaining status within the game other than a correct guess - some players had the advantage of knowing more people in the class, and therefore were more likely to know the owner's history that could relate to the item. These players became central nodes of the narrative, and tended to speak more."

         I believe this is true but there is also how do I describe this, you recognize something similar to what you do yourself and take a chance the other person "thinks" the same way. Amber’s paper clip being used on a chip bag I am surprised I didn’t pick up on. I haven’t used a clip like that and I don’t bring bags that big into the house for the simple reason I’ll sit in front of the television and eat the whole bag. A day or two later when I get a blood pressure test and find my pressure elevated, I’ll be wondering why it’s elevated. I solved that problem by buying one of those $0.25 bags when the urge hits so it really helps keeping my blood pressure down, among other things.

         Another method of "winning" was to come up with clever or amusing answers, even if they were completely wrong. So, I think we might remember more key players from that game, as there were more ways to "win."

         When there’s no stake in wasting questions then one throws anything against the wall to see if it sticks.

         "Just a thought - I wonder if the item use game narrative would have progressed more like the 20 questions narrative if played by members of a more collectivist group? (For instance a group of close friends.) In a school setting, our default reaction to any challenge is likely competitive, focused on goals and power..."

         Ah Ah Ah! That’s a Western mentality. I would venture to say that if played in a Eastern society, school setting there would have been a collective effort. Westerners tend to think singularly and stress individualism, while Eastern thought stresses collective thinking as a whole.

         "...whereas in a friendlier setting we may tend to seek approval and resources from our in-group. The tighter constraints of 20 questions in essence transformed our class into a collective "us" vs. "them" so individual competition was redirected."

         Usually what you see is the word "other" vs the use of the word "them" to the point of where it becomes so overused one looses track of what "other" is.

         "I’m sure we’ve all experienced group work in which there was not as much cohesion, though - probably because loose constraints do not sufficiently motivate most people to set aside individual ambition."

         Really, you mean there are groups that self-destruct right at the get go. Naw, I’ve NEVER seen that. ;-)

         "Student narratives that examine group dynamics, such as evaluation of class partners, often focus on the personal qualities and faults of fellow members while ignoring how the "obvious" constraints of the task (time, materials, etc)."

         In IFSM some professors used a great heuristic for this purpose. If you were splitting $100 between the group members, how much should each member get from the $100.

         "The same thing goes for the "blue sheet" student evaluations of teachers - perhaps a lecture teacher who seemed boring was constrained by the time limit of the class, or something like that..."

         Or going to fast because the lecturer is being expected to cover too much in too small a time period.

         "... - but there’s a tendency to assign oversimplified "protagonist" and "antagonist" labels, losing the people, conditions and events that shaped the main characters."

         I agree and as always, there’s nothing in between or degrees only absolutes.

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"Eamon & Frankee" by B. Bauhaus ahhh blackboard posts, how i've missed thee. how i ever went two weeks without you, i'll never quite understand. anyway, i suppose that a song is the most familiar type of narrative for me. but, then again, i also enjoy reading poems and fictional novels, online news, and instant messenger (can that really be considered a narrative?... yeah, i think so). but, i think i'm just gonna stick to songs, for the sake of creating a post that's not 50 pages long.

         anyway, after reading bill's post about 'beer bong billy' (i really do think he was talking about himself, by the way), i have a better understanding of this assignment. song lyrics can say SO many things, but leave out just as much info.

        the best example i can think of right now, and this may sound a little corny but it works, is a song called "Fuck It (I Don't Want You Back)" by a particularly talented individual that goes by the name of Eamon. One day back in 2004, Eamon aka "The One Hit Wonder," wrote a song criticizing his past relationship with an ex-girlfriend. Poor Eamon. After his song blared on every top-40 radio station for about 3 months, listeners were bound to become sympathetic with him as he sang ever so heartbrokenly:

All together now: "awwwww!"

yeah, i don't think a song could get much more annoying than that. well, maybe... so, by the end of Eamon's reign as a one hit wonder on pop radio, i'm pretty certain he had everyone on his side. listeners would say, "wow, his ex is such a jerk!" and things in the like. but, did anyone ever wonder what his ex's side of the story was? you've seen Eamon's p.o.v., now let's hear what Frankee, Eamon's ex-girlfriend and author of "FURB (Fuck You Right Back)," has to say:

(You know there are two sides to every story)

hmmm... so, you see? who are ya feelin' sorry for now, huh?

"IM as Narrative?" a response to B. Bauhaus' "Eamon & Frankee" by P.C. Paul
B. Bauhaus said, “…and instant messenger (can that really be considered a narrative?... yeah, i think so).” I concur if one chooses to use IM this way. I know I did. I would create short stories on the spot while conversing with people. I used to post fiction in a forum and some people did not believe I was the author or that I could take one word or phrase of something they said and weave an entire text around it at the snap of their fingers. A few chose to “test” me only to find themselves gaping open-mouthed that it was true, it’s true. Yes IM is a narrative regardless of Bartleby’s insistence that it is not. (And you CAN combine genre anytime it suits your purposes, see James Joyce’s “Ulysses.”

         "All together now: 'awwwww!' Awwwwww!

         “yeah, i don't think a song could get much more annoying than that.” No? Don’t bet on it. We are going to have Bad Music Day. I suspect we will have to bring in a bad song. As always that leaves a great deal of space as in bad lyrics, bad music, bad sound quality, or it’s so “bad” it’s good. I am working on locating the epiphany of “Bad” of the post-punk era. Mark Smith and The Fall from the album “Hex Enduction Hour and the song is I’m into CB. I am still trying to determine if it’s bad because of the vocals, the lyrics, the music, the recording or whether it’s so bad, “Do you really expect us to take this seriously or is this tongue and cheek on Mark Smith’s part. The song seems to be ribbing the whole genre and taking the genre to the extreme but Mark Smith is extreme (Extremely bad--I also sampled other songs, but they actually find the really bad stuff by choosing certain portions of songs and negating other parts: What to include, what to negate in a narrative). Judging from the rest of the music he has done on independent recording labels for some 20 years I think he’s just the best of the worst. A perfect example of what happens when you take something way too far.

         “hmmm... so, you see? who are ya feelin' sorry for now, huh?” As I said in my post, I don’t know what philosopher said it but all sides are the truth and it is not until we see all sides that we may begin to drill down to the truth, if at all.

         This discussion across lyrics is nothing new. Mark Smith of The Fall and Steven Duffy Morrissey of The Smiths did this all the time. There was a rivalry between them. They considered themselves brothers because they both started our recording with “Rough Trade Records” an independent record label and because they both had the same last surname, Smith.

         The rivalry began when within a year and a half, The Smiths were asked to sign on with a big corporate record label mainly Warner Brothers. Poor Mark Smith was left in the dust and was much older than The Smiths both in chronological age as an artist and as a group. In other words, Mark Smith was writing music while The Smiths were in their daddy’s sack.

         Needless to say, Mark Smith was quite jealous and began to write songs about Morrissey. Morrissey in turn wrote songs secretly responding to Mark Smith.

         Morrissey wrote such songs as Tony the Pony and Get Off the Stage. In turn, Mark Smith wrote songs such as C. R. E. E. P. and Oh! Brother.

         As you see conversations being conducted through lyrics from one group to another is nothing new.

A response to B. Bauhaus' "Eamon & Frankee" by Y. Martin
Interesting word choice. Brit You are so crazy.

A response to B. Bauhaus' "Eamon & Frankee" by S. Kibler
Jeeze...I think I feel sorry for the poor person who ends up with either Eamon or Frankee. They kind of seem perfect for each other!

A response to B. Bauhaus' "Eamon & Frankee" by W. Chewning
Songs can also be narratives that can help people release tension, anger, love, and whatever other feelings/emotions they might have. "Sad songs, they say so much...." I guess the same is true of mad songs. If it makes ya feel better, crank 'em up!

         little kids. what good writers. and even better liars. The construction and consumption of a lie as a narrative is one of the most intricate flow charts within the realm of communication. There are many key players and key factors in telling stories.

         Personal example: It was my third summer working as a camp counselor at Indian Creek School. The kids there pay more to go to preschool than I do to go to college. One particular four year old girl, who I will call "Ella", took a liking to me and often followed me around the entire day. I was friends with one of the other counselors from the big kids camp: "Rex" and we would often eat lunch together. Rex was also Ella's babysitter outside of camp and she often told me that she loved Rex and was going to marry him. Packing up to go home one day Rex and I were talking to Ella and before leaving I asked her if she had to "tinkle." Long "story" short, Ella went home and told her parents that I asked her if Rex made her tingle in her privates. Obviously confusing "tinkle" and "tingle," whether it was through her missing teeth or lack of brain development, nearly got me fired. Her father showed up at the camp the next morning to call me a pervert as the flag raising (I was 15 at the time) and withdrew Ella from the camp. Rex and I were no longer allowed to speak at work.

         I know parents are really protective of their children. And I am really protective of my reputation as not a pedophile. But how far can one lie, one misunderstanding, reach into reality? There is more than one version of this narrative out there now because who do we actually believe. The father believes one, then there's me, there's Rex, there's whatever the director of the camp calls to be true and then there's Ella who by now probably doesn't even remember it, so therefore the narrative is dead at that end. But is a lie simultaneously a truth, while it's still a story?

         The writers at work on this are the tellers, the believers and the disbelievers. The tools at work are whatever is necessary to confirm and/or deny. And do not these roles and tools begin their activity as soon as we begin to talk? So then, are we not writers all our lives? Even when we're kids and we say the darndest things.

"The Truth is Usually Sandwitched Between Two Lies..." a response to E. Piccirillo's "Sometimes a Lie is the Best Thing" by P.C. Paul
“some of the best writers don't have best selling books, some of them have never written a book, some of them can't even read one.”

         No, because these writers carry on with the age old tradition of the oral narrative, the ancient art of story telling and a great text bed for this is the Appalachian mountains.

         “little kids. what good writers. and even better liars. The construction and consumption of a lie as a narrative is one of the most intricate flow charts within the realm of communication. There are many key players and key factors in telling stories.”

         Flow chart a very fascinating term. I actually used a flow chart to determine if I was missing any steps in creating my presentation and lo and behold, the flow chart revealed holes I quickly filled in my blueprint. Flow charts are extremely useful tools that are hardly used anymore. A professor from Drexel was dead set on them when designing processes. He sucked in teaching assembler language and queue theory but man, could this guy push you to make a mean flow chart. They really slow your mind down to consider each and every design decision along the way. Superb for accounting for things in Goals and Choices. It’s a shame that we don’t have Visio available on all the computers across campus. I would also love to see a flow chart of lies designed by the corporate pigs of Enron and Arthur Anderson.

         “personal example: It was my third summer working as a camp counselor at Indian Creek School. The kids there pay more to go to preschool than I do to go to college. One particular 4 year old girl, who I will call "Ella", took a liking to me and often followed me around the entire day. I was friends with one of the other counselors from the big kids camp: "Rex" and we would often eat lunch together. Rex was also Ella's babysitter outside of camp and she often told me that she loved Rex and was going to marry him. Packing up to go home one day Rex and I were talking to Ella and before leaving I asked her if she had to "tinkle." Long "story" short, Ella went home and told her parents that I asked her if Rex made her tingle in her privates. Obviously confusing "tinkle" and "tingle," whether it was through her missing teeth or lack of brain development, nearly got me fired. Her father showed up at the camp the next morning to call me a pervert as the flag raising (I was 15 at the time) and withdrew Ella from the camp. Rex and I were no longer allowed to speak at work.”

         My original post to you crashed and I’m going to try to recap but will never recover what I said. It is a shame that we live in such a time that everyone is so sensitive and everyone must guard every utterance that someone else may take offense to the language chosen. I can clearly understand with such perverse people in the world that we must guard our children (I don’t have any) and in order to do this we must at such a tender age must make the decision to provide them with information such as this (sexual nature) in order for them to take the first step in protecting themselves yet this information other than for protection strips them of their innocence. We provide them with the information that we deem will be necessary to help protect them from a predator but the child knows more than they actually need to know and applies the knowledge incorrectly. In addition, adults tend to drill the child on such occasions to the point that the child says “yes” to almost anything in order to resume the musings of the childlike mind. Hence, the adult accepts the “yes” as a truth when in fact the child is giving the adult any answer the adult wants to hear in order to return to their childlike ways. The adult misses these clues and believes more happened and does not accept the fact that children twist things up because of a lack of knowledge of what they are saying and have no knowledge of the dire implications when errors are made: the cost of someone’s reputation.

         “But is a lie simultaneously a truth, while it's still a story?” This is where I really dug in. I can just envision posing this question to an android and watching its head explode. A philosopher said that all views are the truth, which plays into Einstein’s theory of relativity. That from a particular moment in time and space each observer, orator, or listener captures a version of the truth: a relative truth. This means that few have the absolute truth. If there had been another observer in earshot, their version very well may have been different once again because they may have only half-heard what was said or attached their mind to the words they chose to remember creating yet another version of the truth or one step further, they were hard of hearing. I would have to venture to say that “yes” there is a story here, “yes” each person chose to retain portions and negate portions but as you say down below we should also consider that children are not the most reputable witnesses which should have also been considered. I remember an old girlfriend telling me a story of two girls and a boy similar ages where something unwanted occurred but the two girls left the room. This became a subtle dialog with the child and one had to be attentive to the girl’s intensity in reporting “just the facts.” The way the little girl accounted for the situation was quite matter of fact and more like an account of her day. The little girl said what she said, assigned no importance to the encounter and in her mind had already moved on indicating that nothing happened but for future reference, the mother did speak to the boy’s mother. The boy’s mother took the encounter quite well and decided that there will be no more opportunities for this type of situation in the household in the future. The little talk probably went a little further most likely to squelch the boy’s behavior in other situations. In this case the matter seems to be handled well but as you have pointed out this is not always the case. There is obviously a very delicate balance here for the safety of the child but there has to also be consideration for the reputation of the adult. It’s funny how times have changed so quickly because such a situation with an adult woman the child would have been the one suspect of no telling the truth or having confused the truth under the guise that “Women are maternal and don’t do such things.” For man nothing has changed and if it isn’t his child he would just grab a woman to handle such matters to avoid the problem you’re focusing on.

         “The writers at work on this are the tellers, the believers and the disbelievers. The tools at work are whatever is necessary to confirm and/or deny. And do not these roles and tools begin their activity as soon as we begin to talk?”

         Of course the writer has a formulation in their mind or intent as to what they intend to convey to the listener especially in the oral tradition.

         So then, are we not writers all our lives?

         Of course we are. You are pulling this out of 493 aren’t you? Whether we are creating to do lists, building our tax reports, writing personal letters, or even if we are dialoging with someone just sharing and recounting the day’s events or non-events, we are writers. His makes me think of History because I have met so many men who served in WWII who have not written their accounts of battles they served in because they account for them orally and many historians are only beginning to wake up to this fact finding themselves running around the country with a tape recorder accounting for their days in WWII. I hadn’t thought about this when I had the opportunity but a friend’s father was on a ship in the South Pacific which was only on the seas 120 days before it was torpedoed and he was one of the few survivors. Now what we miss is that among the few that survived there are less every year because of old age and the stories these men have still not been accounted for in history. Sure history can tell us such and such a ship was sunk by so and so on this day at this time at this place but only the survivors can account for the carnage at the scene at that moment in time: the eyewitness account or the personal history which is much more powerful than all the statistics that can be reported. It is the personal account that brings the account home so to speak.

         Even when we're kids and we say the darndest things.

         Yes, and because of their innocents and inexperience they have no understanding that dialogs have implications. At a tender age I learned a hard lesson that there are things you never report, no matter how mundane because they can easily be misconstrued, re-contextualized, and used against you.

A response to E. Piccirillo's "sometimes a lie is the best thing" by W. Chewning
Brittany and I were just talking about Tracy Chapman the other night. Where is she? Her webpage hasn't been updated since last year. Did she quit?

A response to W. Chewning's post by Shipka
bill--you are something else.

         Take for example the OED choices of the words we selected, many people ventured out to worlds that they were familiar or comfortable with. Other people chose words that have many meanings. After listening to the choices of the words chosen, there were many words not selected for various reasons. I wasn't until the actual project and detail that in some cases word choices were changed as well as presentation methods. There were key players as well as factors that constituted the results of that word.

         In regards to narrative formation and structure, the same concepts apply. When a person chooses a song, story etc... there are many key factors that go into the process. The narrative word choice for some people may be the key reason many items are purchased, reviewed or enjoyed. Yet for others the vocals, title, percussion etc... may have added to the selection process. Personal there are so many factors that go into the events that help narrate everything that I do. I am quite sure someone people can agree with that statement. In looking at a paper for example, if you hand in a paper to a professor that is grammatical and phonically structured yet they are only focused on the content and if you accomplished reaching the task then WATCH OUT! You may have to redo the paper or SUCK IT UP and know so the next time what they are looking for. This event will narrate how you will look at conversation and representation in that class but you narrative formation will definitely be different for the next paper turned in.

         Oddly, I often write this way too. When I write a story I like to start right in the middle of the action and not give the entire back story, but enough that the reader can understand/make meaning out of what is going on. Unfortunately, this rarely works out for me on the first attempt. As the writer of the text, I understand where/how the information that I am giving fits into the bigger story in my head. However, the reader (consumer) obviously cannot see what’s in my head and is often left confused by what I’ve written. I don’t want to give too much information that is obvious and boring to the reader, however in doing so, I often leave out too much as well. In my quest to write with some ambiguity, I really end up just writing really confusing stuff. I can be a creative writing teacher’s worst nightmare.

         Chess games function as narratives even without words because events are communicated through motions. Someone familiar with the rules of chess can watch a game progress and understand it as a “story” unfolding. Conclusions are important to narratives, and chess games conclude with either a victory for one side or the other or a “draw.” A draw is a tie. A much less common conclusion to a game of chess is a stalemate, a situation where one side is unable to move, but is not in checkmate. In some sense, this result does not so much conclude the game as terminate it (a distinction Wertsch makes between annals and narratives). On the other hand, the rareness and surprise value of a stalemate adds interest to the chess narrative.

         A brief thought on the 20 questions “narrative”? Did Shipka not toy with the idea of maintaining the secret if we failed to guess the thing in her pocket? Would this have deprived our narrative of a conclusion, a payoff? Would it have “terminated” rather than concluded our story?

"We Are All Pawns in 'This' Game You Know..." a response to G. Masters ' "Chess Narrative" by P.C. Paul
“I’ve just returned from chess club, where I hit upon the idea of describing chess games as narratives. Staring at the checkered boards and pieces upon squares, I realized that I was watching (and constructing) coherent stories. Each game has a temporal element: a beginning, middle and end. The start of the game is known as the “opening,” and it is the time during which each player develops his/her pieces to logical squares. In a sense, the main characters are introduced in the opening,” said Masters

         Interesting as you chose to focus on the inanimate objects on the board as though they were alive versus the silent dialog of body language between the human opponents. Let’s follow the logic. In other words, particular chess pieces become the central characters in the narrative, say the black knight opposing the white bishop. The white rook against a black bishop and so forth. Not all the pieces on the board are key players as some merely become pawns even though they are not. (“We are ALL pawns in ‘THIS’ game you know...” :-) Masters continued, “After the opening comes the “middle game,” the time when each army is positioned far enough up-board to start interacting with the other army. This is the part of the game where conflict really takes hold and pieces begin flying off the board in a mad rush of exchanges and sacrifices. Think of it as the really bloody part of a battle.”

         I don’t know if others can follow this but I can in the sense of the ancient tradition of hand to hand combat on the battlefield with all its speed and ferocity.

         “When enough pieces have left the board, the “end game” takes over. In the end game each player strategically maneuvers what few pieces he has left. Very often one side will have gained a decisive advantage from the middle game and will have to convert that advantage to a victory in the end game,” said Masters.

         Would this not also be in a sense where both sides of a battle weary and where strategic errors also occur?

         Masters, continued, “Chess games function as narratives even without words because events are communicated through motions.”

         Here I would also think there would be symbolism also. The chess game reduces to a very simple mathematical equation where there are really few alternatives.

         “Someone familiar with the rules of chess can watch a game progress and understand it as a “story” unfolding. Conclusions are important to narratives, and chess games conclude with either a victory for one side or the other or a “draw,” Masters said.

         "A draw is a tie. A much less common conclusion to a game of chess is a stalemate, a situation where one side is unable to move but is not in checkmate.” But to move places piece in check, yes?

         In some sense, this result does not so much conclude the game as terminate it (a distinction Wertsch makes between annals and narratives). On the other hand, the rareness and surprise value of a stalemate adds interest to the chess narrative.

         A brief thought on the twenty questions “narrative”? Did Shipka not "play" with the idea of maintaining the secret if we failed to guess the thing in her pocket? Yes and that was our incentive for playing because for some their curiosity would have gotten the best of them.

         "Would this have deprived our narrative of a conclusion, a payoff?" Yes it would have deprived the narrative of a conclusion.

         "Would it have “terminated” rather than concluded our story?" Right, like the flipping of a switch in the middle of a video game.

A response to G. Masters' "Chess Narrative" by W. Chewning
Ya know, I thought that maybe Shipka has a couple things in her pocket. What if she had a pack of sugar and a pack of relish in her pocket? They are so close (in the twenty questions sense) that all of our questions would have been answered the same way (I think). She could have had alternate endings that would have produced the same outcome - we lose and the mystery is a successful one.

A response to W. Chewning's post by P.C. Paul
Interesting dilemma but Sarah did ask if the object was within the color spectrum of red/yellow/orange/green. The sweet relish was covered but the sugar would pose a new problem because this falls into to the non-colors: black and white.

A response to G. Masters' "Chess Narrative by Shipka
Depends on how you think of payoff or termination. My sense was that it would have given folks more time to think, plan out strategies, etc... and what if no one would have known the "right" answer? How does this change the game/story? For my part, it would have been really cool if there had not been a reveal... maybe 20 years from now, someone would think of this day and think to write me to ask if I actually remembered what had been in my pocket.

         Also, what difference would it have made (i.e., would the game have been more or less worthwhile) if there had been nothing in my pocket?

A response to G. Masters' and Shipka's posts by P.C. Paul
Masters: Conclusions are important to narratives, and chess games conclude with either a victory for one side or the other or a "draw." A draw is a tie. A much less common conclusion to a game of chess is a stalemate, a situation where one side is unable to move but is not in checkmate.

Masters: A brief thought on the twenty questions “narrative”?did Shipka not toy with the idea of maintaining the secret if we failed to guess the thing in her pocket? Would this have deprived our narrative of a conclusion, a payoff? Would it have “terminated” rather than concluded our story?

Shipka: Depends on how you think of payoff or termination. My sense was that it would have given folks more time to think, plan out strategies, etc... and what if no one would have known the "right" answer? How does this change the game/story? For my part, it would have been really cool if there had not been a reveal... maybe 20 years from now, someone would think of this day and think to write me to ask if I actually remembered what had been in my pocket.

Also, what difference would it have made (i.e., would the game have been more or less worthwhile) if there had been nothing in my pocket?

Paul: From what I am reading here without putting words in Greg’s mouth, he is saying that a payoff is the satisfaction of having a conclusion. Ah, I see something here. A payoff is satisfaction and we like satisfaction and dislike dissatisfaction. A conclusion is closure, something else we like. Without a conclusion we have open-ended-ness. Relating this to a narrative we can all understand, a stake in a vampire’s heart ends a narrative and we have closure. The narrative has become finite like ourselves. If the vampire gets away we have no closure, no ending, and the narrative continues endlessly, hence infinite. Infinity is a really difficult concept to grasp as finite beings; therefore, we like things that have closure.

Paul: Right now we are creating a narrative because I had to back up through several posts to piece back together what was said so I could follow "this" narrative. If we did not have the right answer AND you chose to not reveal the answer people would be bothering you the rest of the semester to KNOW what was in your pocket because inquisitive minds want to know. Some minds would have forgotten the whole narrative. Others wound dwell on it until their last breath. Therefore without closure someone probably would ask you twenty years later what was in your pocket.

Paul: Addressing the possibility of there being no object in your pocket I think as a social group or a community we would have cried foul and viewed the game as a trick. Now there would be a breakdown in trust. Some from that point on may have decided not to play from there on because of the breakdown in trust. As a community of gamers some would have said "You don’t play fair, therefore I don’t want to play with you because of the breakdown in trust and because there’s no payoff for the gamer. There’s no incentive to play. This becomes a matter of expectations. The expectation that there is something in the pocket. The expectation that if after 20 questions we will be told what was in the pocket, the expectation that we will not ask 21 questions hoping that you lost count. There are expectations in the game that rules will be observed and that rules will not change mid-stream.

         I usually write short analysis type pieces or sports columns, and those articles have to tell a story in about one-to-three pages. In these pieces, one might highlight a player or news or give an opinion about one central topic of concern. In-between trying to cover one aspect of the story, a writer must also include statistics, quotes and other sources to strengthen the message. That information cannot supersede the main points that support the thesis of the article.

         However, in other forms of writing, like in the case of a short story or novel, the writer can wander off topic more times because he has more pages to work with to tell a story. In these stories, it's not a bad idea to go off track because it keeps the reader interested in all of the aspects of the story. For instance, because there are a multitude of characters in every piece of narrative, each character's story can be represented and showcased as a piece of the story puzzle. As long as the points are brought back together, the writer can steer off track to some degree because he has more freedom when writing a longer story.

         If we were given every bit of information without asking questions, would you believe it? I wouldn’t. It wouldn’t matter who was giving me the information; I like to ask questions... I want to lead the questions to an ultimate point or answer. Spoon feeding is too easy in my taste. By having this mentality of asking questions for our own interpretive final answer, wrong presumptions will most likely happen. That is why we should be given a certain amount of information, even if it’s a little bit of info, before forming our own narrative.

         It’s actually hard to choose which narratives I consume more-academic papers or songs. Academic papers are generally consumed mentally, in other words, I rarely read papers allowed by silently, yet I must be isolated in a area with no other distracters-this means, television, people, my dog, the radio, my ipod, etc. I am best to consume academic papers or even stories, when I’m all alone-the more quiet the space around me the better. When it comes to songs, I rarely look the lyrics up online and read them quietly but consume the lyrics by listening to them, and sometimes even singing along with the song. Even songs that I dislike-whether it be the words or the rhythm of the beat or EVEN the musical artist-I will sing along because I feel as if the song will go by a lot more faster when I’m singing along to it.

         I think what’s most interesting is hearing people’s views or accounts of the same event or action. It’s always interesting how different narratives can be formed or different paths are taken in each individual’s account and perception. For instance, I was in a car accident today. It’s a perfect example. The narrative can be so different among the two parties who were involved in the same car accident. As I made my claim with my insurance representative today, I thought about what the other party would say about the event. I think to some extent it would interest to hear the narratives and how different they can be in the same tragic event. Or even the narrative going on or being formed in the minds of the people who were involved in the car accident as everyone gets out of the car to point their fingers at who is at fault. My narrative started to form as soon as I got out of my car and saw that a little boy had been a passenger in the other car. I saw another girl come out of the same car with private school wear on (she looked about 14 yrs. of age) and swore that she was giving me the look of death. She grabbed her brother into her arms as to try to protect his little body. I was thankful to see he walked out of the car fine, and wondered if the boy were shocked. I immediately flash-backed to my first car accident--I was 11 years old-and how scary it was for me so I could only imagine how he must have felt. I started developing this paranoia that the grandfather figure that was the driver of the car was summing me up as this little witch (it rhymes with witch, but I used this word instead) who had harmed his grandkids. Who knows if he was thinking this or if these were his grandkids? I was developing this narrative, mostly around the people in other car, but rarely took notice to the actual damage of the car (until of course, a guy from my work came to help me take pictures and get everything squared away, etc.). I walked away wondering exactly what kind of narrative the driver and passengers had developed and what they had paid more attention to or rather attended to and what details they had not. I guess I’ll never know, but I’m just relieved that little boy was okay. Regardless of the fault it was) and I won’t say because it’s ‘smart’ not to in these sort of cases), I would’ve been crushed-much like my car looks---but to a much greater extent.

"You know Dr. Johnson?"

"...he's...not my doctor..."

"But you know him?"

"He is not my doctor."

"He know you."

"He is not--"

And then Dr. Wong walked away.

So, in constructing this narrative, I took a short piece of dialogue that was the product of my sister's experience with her doctor, and what I imagined a conversation with her doctor and a hypochondriac, who doesn't want to see the family practitioner, Dr. Johnson, would be like. And I'm attempting to build from that in both directions. I want to include this dialogue in the final copy, but sometimes I write a story like this and end up eliminating the charge, or what set it off.

         A major choice in writing a story like this one is whether or not to reveal the main character's real condition. I don't consider this a hard choice, but it is a major choice. I chose to make it evident from the beginning, or close to it, that Larry is a hypochondriac and there is nothing really wrong with him. I considered giving it the title "Larry the Hypochondriac" but figured that would be a little on the nose. By deciding this, I eliminate (hopefully) the possibility for the story to deteriorate into a "oh, he wasn't really sick after all, how cute" kind of thing. I want to shift the focus from his condition to his struggle with Dr. Johnson. This Johnson character will (I haven't written this part yet) come to see Larry and have some sort of confrontation, without crisis, and have Larry eventually go looking for more of Dr. Wong's antidote (Aloe Vera) to battle his leprosy (sunburn).

         I know this sounds ridiculous. It is. But if I'm to deconstruct something, it might as well be this thing. So, after finding the initial inspiration through my sister's description of her doctor, and the subsequent dialogue, I decided to create a basic outline. I wrote it on a napkin while I was eating a KONG pizza with my sister. It reads, "get to hospital/Dr. Wong/Dr. Johnson/Nurse?/Fin."

So this napkin is the controlling force behind my narrative at this point. I must try and follow it as closely as possible.

         Or narrative.

         When I think of narrative, of course the creative writing class I'm taking right now springs immediately to mind. I have a short story due tomorrow, so the process for creating that type of narrative is fresh in my mind. I don't know how I come up with ideas, but to flesh them out is a matter of asking questions and answering them on the paper. Questions like: who is this person, what are they doing, why are they doing it, who does it affect, how do they react to it help shape the narrative as I'm writing it. There are other pretty common narratives however.

         Conversations are like narratives in two voices. Each person has a speaking part and they guide the conversations, usually by asking questions. Or they control the conversation by dominating and not asking questions, thereby not giving the other player time to speak. I most conversations there is a give and take, where one person asks something (I would say, usually something they themselves want to eventually talk about) and the other person answers and reciprocates: "what about you?" In this case, like the short story, the flow and development of the narrative is allowed or constrained through the use of questions.

         Those seem to be my two most common narratives right now, and often it seems to be a combination. Within conversation I tell short little stories, but even in this case I give information based on questions that I ask myself or that I think the listeners might ask me. For instance, I might ask myself, "what do they know, what back story do I have to give, how do they feel about the people involved..." and I might assume that they are asking themselves "who is she talking about, what day was that on, how did that go, why did she do that... etc." and they can be asked or remain unasked. False assumptions about these questions and their answers can lead to misunderstandings like we were talking about in class on Monday, if you assume that they know the general situation and they don't, and make an incorrect assumption abut what you are talking about, you could be talking about two totally different things.