Quotes :)

“The point, for me, is to start out subjectless. Why? Because the subject inevitably becomes a straitjacket…” – Gil Adamson

“It is hopefully clear at this point that Recordism is not an entirely new way of eating cheese. It is instead an entirely new way of eating leftover potato salad!” – William A. Davison

I remember clearly a collage of Ludwig’s featuring a woman’s head with a huge horn growing out her ear and ending in a machine of some kind. I was both mesmerized and terrified by it.” – Beatriz Hausner

Writer – Jacqueline Turner

Jacqueline Turner

There wasn’t a lot of info on Jacqueline Turner that I could find, but I did find something interesting. It was the events that happen in a morning of Ms. Turner. This post showed what goes through her mind when writing in the morning, and what she does to prepare for this task. She starts off by saying that her morning does not contain a consistent ritual. She says that her mind works differently from most writers; when she starts developing some kind of consistent pattern, her contrary nature suggests breaking it. I found this to be really cool because it shows that she doesn’t just sit down start writing for hours and hours and BAM – MASTERPIECE! No, she gets a cup of coffee (one of the only consistent parts of her mornings), and starts making a list of words; being “barely awake”. I found this to be kinda weird because what kind of words would she use to possibly make a list (:S). Well, she does, and that’s what works for her. After making her list, her next move is based on an idea she gets from reading something by Harryette Mullen: “Sleeping with the Dictionary”. I’m not sure if this is a book or an insert of some kind, but she uses it to guide her. The list she has is actually used to get her out of jams; if she gets stuck, she takes a word from her list. Now THAT makes a lot more sense doesn’t it? She ends off by saying basically, she sits at her laptop with her word list and coffee, tries not to spill the coffee, and just starts writing. I like her style, it’s really free and open; not really any restrictions on her and she’s just really chill about everything. I read some of her work in “Seven into Eleven” and I found it to be really interesting. She can go anywhere from a 20 word piece, to a 200 word piece. Some of her pieces I found a little confusing, but others were real mind bogglers. Her piece “glutton” is really attractive. The way she wrote it was really impelling, and it finished in what I thought was 3 seconds. It got me lost in time, and it really wasn’t about anything “big”; just someone drinking wine, maybe beer, and eating chocolate with some whipped cream. I think that when someone can talk about something as simple as eating and make people feel lost in time while doing it, they’ve really captured the art of poetry.

Writing Style – Poem Type

Type of Poem: Doggerel? :S

Doggerel is defined as a light verse which is humourous and comic by nature – often viewed with disdain as containing little literacy value. What drew me to investigate this type to be honest, was just the name. Doggerel? Like seriously, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you see this word; yeah, dogs. I was puzzled and thought that maybe it’s a poem about dogs, but that would be a weird “type” of poem, so I decided to investigate it, and when I found out what it was, I wasn’t really that surprised. If it has some comic verses in the poem, it would add life to it in a sense and dogs do add life to people’s lives. Maybe this isn’t the reason that the type was called Doggerel, but I’m going to see it that way. I found an example of a Doggerel poem, and here it is:

Excerpt from
Barnabee’s Journal
by
Richard Brathwaite

To Banbury I came, O profane one!
Where I saw a Puritane-one
Hanging of his cat on Monday
For killing of a mouse on Sunday.

I thought that this poem captured the definition of the type amazingly. What the heck’s a Puritane one? That word made me laugh, and that shows that this had a comic verse in it of course. I personally have never heard of a Doggerel poem, so I feel that if more people knew about this type, people would try making Doggerel poems of their own. This was worth investigating, and once again, MORE PEOPLE SHOULD KNOW ABOUT THIS.

Blood-Crip Dispute: Interesting Info.

• The original name for the crips was “Cribs” because of the average aged members being mostly youths
• By 1978, there were 45 Crips gangs (called sets) and they were operating in Los Angeles.
• Crips has over 800 sets with 30,000 –  35,000 members and associates (more than 13,000 of these members are still in Los Angeles)
• By 1971, a gang on Piru Street in Compton known as the Piru Street Boys was formed and associated themselves with the Crips as a set.
• After two years of peace, a feud began between the Piru Street Boys and the other Crip sets. It   turned ugly as gang warfare started happening between former allies.
• This battle continued and by 1973, the Piru Street Boys wanted to end the violence and called a meeting with other gangs that were targeted by the Crips
• After a long discussion, the Pirus broke all connections to the Crips and started an organization which is now the Bloods
• Crips and Bloods have different alphabet rules due to their dislike of the opposite gang
• So for the Crips, the words “kick back” will instead be written as “kicc bkacc” due to their rules of the alphabet.
• This occurs because the Crips don’t like the letter B because of the Bloods, so they “disrespect” it by putting a cross through the letter. Another thing is the letters CK put together in a word; they don’t like this because CK stands for Crip Killers so instead, they double the C in a word that would normally have CK (back = bkacc)

Now these were the things I found that I never knew about prior to the research. What really interested me, was the alphabetical rules these gangs have. They take the “ck” in words and change them in to “cc”, that’s kinda cool. I see now that these groups are really about respect, and the letter pairing of “C” and “K” is looked upon as disrespect. Another thing I never knew was that, the bloods were originally part of their enemies’ sets…wow. I would have NEVER guessed that, and that really shows how if pushed far enough, these sets would go against each other due to disrespect. Yes, we all have watched these groups show up on T.V, and we all have our different opinions on these people, but I see now that overall, it’s all about what they feel is “theirs” and these people are fighting for it. A lot of the violence is unnecessary, but these groups feel that it is indeed necessary, so the battles brew on. I feel that by investigating this topic further, I’ve learned new things that changes some of my views on this topic. It’s interesting to see how each gang progressed, and got to where they are today.