Lorem Ipsum

Ah, man... I didn't quite make it to the one-year mark of post-silence...

For reasons that I won't go into at the moment (perhaps I'll come back and edit this post later, after my several end-of-semester deadlines have finally passed), I love Lorem Ipsum, the text-looking space filler that you can learn about here.  It really is telling about a lot of my personal aesthetic, and since I'm trying to keep this blog as egotistical as possible, I probably ought to explain more about it some time.

But the reason I bring it up now is because a moment ago, a word processor which shall remain unnamed was glitching on me, and I had to ditch the file I was working on and start a whole new one.  After copy-pasting my previously written text over, I needed to type some words to make sure the glitch had disappeared.  However, at the moment I was out of thoughts relevant to the topic at hand, so I just started typing filler stuff without really thinking about it--the Lorem Ipsum of my creativity, if you will.  The results made me laugh, so now I'm making you read them, too.

Hey guys.  

What can I do to make a difference in this world of differences?  

Must I be limited to subtraction?  

CAN YOU HEAR ME SAYING NOTHING?

If there are any doges reading this... this one's for dew.

Love,

Emily

Story jam: how to do it

This is an explanation of the rules of a story jam, which is the kind of awesome party that my fiance and I will be hosting in preparatory celebration of our wedding!  Here's how it works:

1. Everyone brings a story to share. 

This can be a favorite children's book, a chapter or excerpt from a novel, a monologue you've always wanted to perform, a movie scene you'd like to reinterpret, a poem, a tale you've written, a remarkable experience you've had... anything that you feel makes a good story. It can be funny, sweet, poignant, ironic, whatever mood you like. Just please consider propriety and courtesy in your selection.

Feel free to collaborate with others in the telling, if you wish. Feel free to bring more than one story, if you just can't decide on one; there will likely be time for both. Feel free to incorporate background music, props, and what have you--just nothing that will ruin the carpet or get us arrested. And, if you really don't want to bring a story, you can still come and hear everyone else's!

2. Everyone participates as a good audience member. 

This means you laugh and cry and applaud when you're supposed to so the story can come alive. It also means that there is no Peanut Gallery-ing or audio commentary UNLESS the storyteller gives the okay; we'll all be sharing a little bit of our souls here, and that merits respect from those receiving. Plus, it's just more fun when everyone feels good about each other and how the story came out.

We've done this in the past with our Friday night movie group, and it's really fun.  This particular event will feature food of some sort and squishy couches.
Stories are one of the things that Josh and I love most, and we intend to make story time a regular occurrence in our home.  We're looking forward to starting this tradition with our friends at the end of the week.  :)

Woohoo! 

Chickens!

Well, it's been forever since I've posted anything.  I've had a few posts in the works, but most of them involved intense thinking and writing, and...it's summer.  However, I did (finally) finish the elephant painting that I hinted at back in May!  And, here he is, folks!

In all his glory.  Photoshop, on a Cintiq; several brushes.

This is actually the painting for the cover of the next volume of the university psychology journal for which I edit.  The final product will have some titles and other info on the right side, a quote from a folktale on the left side (see below), and will be folded in half down the middle of the elephant's face.  And the journal will be 6x9 inches, or something like that.  'Twill be great.

The shapes all over his face are a reference to phrenology, a faulty but trendy idea from psychologists in the middle and late 1800s.  Here's a link to the Wikipedia article: head bumps

And, to round off this post, here's the excerpt that will be printed on the back of the journal, from the short tale, "The Blind Men and the Elephant."


"When the blind men had felt the elephant, the raja went to each of them and said to each, 'Well, blind man, have you seen the elephant? Tell me, what sort of thing is an elephant?'


"Thereupon the men who were presented with the head answered, 'Sire, an elephant is like a pot.' And the men who had observed the ear replied, 'An elephant is like a winnowing basket.' Those who had been presented with a tusk said it was a ploughshare. Those who knew only the trunk said it was a plough; others said the body was a grainery; the foot, a pillar; the back, a mortar; the tail, a pestle, the tuft of the tail, a brush.


"Then they began to quarrel, shouting, 'Yes it is!' 'No, it is not!' 'An elephant is not that!' 'Yes, it's like that!' and so on, till they came to blows over the matter.


Psychology--trying to understand the human mind and the elephant of what we are--is like this.

EYN

I see

Practicing elephant eyes.  This was painted almost directly from photo reference--a practice technique I learned from my boyfriend (he can paint!), who learned it from this other guy, the other week.

Elephants!

I've been drawing and painting and looking at a lot of them recently.  And then I found these doodles that I did last fall while reading a story called "L'éléphant" (yes, "The Elephant"), by Marcel Aymé.  In this story there is a chicken who wants to be the elephant in a game of Noah's Ark.  She pretends so hard that she actually turns into an elephant and breaks the wall, among other things.

It's a good story.

What's in a name?

A Bertrude by any other name would be just as awkward, right?

Well, weird compound names are fun.  Bertrude and Jeffica having already been established, here are a couple that occurred as I was trying to name some characters in the play-type thing I have in the works.  My guess is that I'll continue to add to this post as time wears on, because a list of goofy names is something worth having on-hand.

Jilliam
Sethew (or, Sethieu, as it was originally spelled in my head)

Autobiographical

I've been mostly writing since 9:00 this morning, so I'm very creatively talkative at the moment.  That's why I'm making a tiny post about a book title that just came to mind:

Spiritual Calculus: Learning the Lord's Timing for Maximum Growth and Blessings


The best thing is that if this winds up being the title of an autobiography-style work, people who don't know me will go into it thinking I'm a math person.  Granted, I did do well in Calculus during high school...  There are all sorts of levels at which this title and the connotations it carries are appropriate.

Now you know.


P.S. It feels really weird to me to post rough, unfinished parts of ideas that may or may not actually go anywhere.

E-pistemology

Hallo!  It's been a while, mostly because I've been desperately swamped in writing papers for the last three months.

Here's some stuff for one of them, my final paper in my Philosophy 150 class.  We're supposed to write about a topic that falls somewhere in the vast realm of epistemology, which is the branch of philosophy that deals with knowledge.  A philosopher exploring the field of epistemology might ask questions such as: "How do we know what we know?" "What is the origin of knowledge?" "Is it more important to know than to love?" and, "What about Naomi?"

The question I'm asking (as prompted by a "discussion" with a friend a while back) is, "Does subjective knowledge have value?"

Many people, my physics-major-friend among them, would contend that it doesn't on the basis that subjective knowledge cannot have a solid "right" and "wrong," and therefore there can be no solid foundation of basic understanding upon which to build.  No building of knowledge means no advancement, so subjective knowledge kind of doesn't go anywhere.  By the same token, it's relatively easy for anyone with any level of training to jump into a subjective field and make it look good, whereas it takes years of studying the right subjects in the right order to get anywhere in an objective field.  Thus, the compared realms of subjective and objective knowledge tend to look like this.

However, in my paper I'll be maintaining that subjective knowledge does have value, though obviously not for the same reasons that objective knowledge does.  Here, with little explanation, are a couple of fuzzy images that came to mind as I worked out my reasons.

We begin with Plato's conception of knowledge.

Knowledge is the intersection between truth and beliefs (see Plato's Republic).

But what if there are different kinds of truths, so that not all truths can be accessed by one kind of knowledge?

If there are different kinds of truths, there must be different kinds of knowledge.  To discount one kind of knowledge would be discounting an entire area of truth (e.g. "Subjective knowledge is not valid, therefore the truth that subjective knowledge covers are not valid").

Here's another way to look at it.

Objective knowledge can be conceived as vertical line because it builds on top of itself, with the knowledge of one person forming the base for the knowledge of the next.

Subjective knowledge can be conceived as a horizontal line because must start anew with each individual.

Each by itself only exists in one dimension of the truth/world.  Only when the two lines are put in conjunction to enter the realm of the second dimension can the world begin to make sense and take on meaningful shape for us.

BIEBSES, BEST BIRTHDAY EVER HAVINGS IT WAS!

And this is a lot of what made it so.

Here is a special comic created for me by my doge, re-posted here with permission.

If this Emil/Baba thing confuses anyone, I...don't know that I have much of an explanation for you.  These two characters just hijacked a texting conversation my doge and I were having one day, and then... well, yes.

The first known image of Baba and Emil.

Thanks for the birthday thoughts, my doge!

Pictures of people!

That I drew!  I was trying out a new process for my very first job as a caricature artist (woohoo!), and these are what happened.  I used pencil (for layout), brush pen, and crayon.



My roommate has the coolest hair...



...but maybe not the coolest hat.



So dashing!  (Aww, yeah!)



So rugby?



These yellow cowslip cheeks...



And these guys also happened. Brush pen, crayon, and some goofing around on Photoshop.  With a mouse.




The unwitting model for the man is never that creepy-looking.

 

Demon of idealism

In the following scenario, let us define B as a friend from French class.  French is one of those things that I frequently accuse of being meaningless (or at least pointless), confusing, and often painful (see also literature, art, philosophy, psychology, and sometimes even music).  Which is obviously why I keep trying to learn and do it.

B also did not get to hear the bulk of this conversation, because I thought of it later.  He started it, though.

E: Just because I think it's meaningelss and confusing doesn't mean I won't work to be good at it.

B: A remarkably effective philosophy for surviving and thriving in college.

E: There's this pesky idelaism demon, though, that objects to my doing anything without meaning it.  Makes for a lot of rationalizing, existential crises, and internal pep talks.  Though I often wonder whether everyone doesn't experience life in much the same way?

That's my cousin!

I was privileged to attend his mission non-farewell* this past Sunday and hear his testimony of the gospel once more in person before he leaves to serve the people of Japan for two years.  While he was speaking, I scribbled him:


His most telling quote was: "I have many doubts about myself, but I have no doubts about my God."  And that, cousin, is why I have no doubts about you.  Good luck, Peter!


*Oh, right.  Just in case there is ever a reader who is unfamiliar with the customs of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the U.S.  Traditionally, when a young man (or woman) is about to leave on a mission, he and his family or close friends will give the sermons, prayers, and/or musical numbers in their ward's Sunday worship meeting (sacrament meeting).  These meetings are often termed "mission farewells," as the family and ward will not see the missionary again for 1 1/2 to 2 years.  However, central Church leadership has recently requested that this practice be changed, as the farewells have tended to focus more on the missionary and less on the gospel he is about to go out and share.  The transition is happening, if slowly.

This will be sort of like Plato's Allegory of the Cave...

...in that we have a sort of exploratory dialogue going on between the philosopher and his friend.  Except in this case, the friend can't get a word in edgewise.

E: Sometimes it's too bad that language is a linear mode of communication.

J: How do you mean?

E: (He asked for it...)  Because, as I'm sure you know, ideas have a tendency to sprout (or explode) off in all directions from whatever starting point, and it can be cumbersome to follow one thread through to its fullness and then have to go all the way back to the beginning and take off in the next direction.

We talk of going off on tangents as though they're extraneous and distracting, but they may in reality be essential parts of the fully developed idea, and we need them to understand the entirety of what's being explored.

I find that I can't ignore the little offshoots of idea (at least when I'm working honestly, from the sincerest part of my creativity), which is probably why I use so many parentheticals, footnotes, fragments, and inside jokes and in my verbal communication.  Which usually means that streamlinedness goes out the window.  But by referencing the points of connection, I can hope that my readers/listeners will get a clearer picture of what's really going on with the idea.

That's a very tenuous hope, though, due to the fact that, by its very nature, language is one-dimensional.  Spoken or written, we can only process it one word at a time, in the chronological order of its reception.  Forcing a whole idea into this time-linear format creates the illusion of precedence (or antecedence?), which can lead to the illusion of causation, when often the components of a truth just are, together and simultaneously.  That's nigh impossible to portray with words.

So, then.  Why write, you ask?

J: No, I actually didn't--

E: Because words, for whatever reason, seem to be the common denominator.  Reading and writing/speaking and listening are skills that almost everyone can learn.  And words are specific; you can be almost sure that your message will come across to anyone who receives it if you've written it well (as opposed to a piece of visual art, or music, or dance; the general feelings may come across all right, but the specific reactions they elicit and images they evoke will often vary enormously from what the creator intended.  Notice that these kinds of things often have a written "artist's statement" to clarify the artist's intentions and/or to shape the viewer's interpretation.  And, yes, much writing is as obscure as any Pollock and can be interpreted and debated all sorts of ways; but words can attain a higher level of precision of expression than any other medium.  Long parenthetical.).  And we in our society expect that of each other.

J: . . .

E: But to write well, in the sense of clarity, one has to conform to the nature of language, i.e. streamline.  Focus.  Cut down on...well, on the sprouts (the bean sprouts; she wants a bean feast).  Otherwise, your writing comes out like that last sentence of mine, and you lose people.  You have to own the single dimensionality.

J: Right.

E: Except that it's wrong!  Because the idea, the truth, (the elephant!) is so much more than that!  Truth is at least two-dimensional, probably more--hence painting, sculpture, music, dance, drama--but when we try to capture it in anything like its entirety, the potential for explicit, certain understanding (slim as it ever was) goes away.  And isn't the point to be understood?






(?): Maybe it's okay for now, while we have to exist in a time-bound realm, to have to deal in its limitations.  We won't always be stuck with an imperfection (lack of wholeness).  Some day, some existence, we will have the capacity to see things as they are (see Moroni 7:48), and those who are with us will have a perfect understanding.

It hasn't been 21 days... It still counts, right?

Well, my dearest doge had her birthday just over a week ago.  And I really meant to make some awesome picture-type tribute to post on the day-of.  But then stuff happened, like illness and midterm millions, on top of the fact that I was having trouble thinking of something to draw that really felt right.

At the same time, My Mom and I had a little Winnie the Pooh revival where we read several of the original books by A. A. Milne.  As we read, the interactions between Pooh and Piglet kept reminding me of my interactions with Madeleine--not that I see her as one and myself as the other, but the dynamic between the two really struck a chord with me.

So I typed up a few excerpts from some of the books to share with her and anyone else who may read this.  It's not really what I expected to do for her birthday, but...

'But it isn't Easy,' said Pooh to himself. . .  'Because Poetry and Hums aren't things which you get, they're things which get you.  And all you can do is to go where they can find you.'

Eeyore Finds the Wolery

...but this is what found me.  It, in all its probable illegality, is dedicated to you, my doge.

Half-way between Pooh's house and Piglet's house was a Thoughtful Spot where they met sometimes when they had decided to go and see each other, and as it was warm and out of the wind they would sit down there for a little and wonder what they would do now that they had seen each other.

Piglet Does a Very Grand Thing

'[It's] a special Outdoor Song which Has To Be Sung in the Snow.'
'Are you sure?' asked Piglet anxiously.
'Well, you'll see, Piglet, when you listen.  Because this is how it begins.  The more it snows, tiddely pom--'
'Tiddely what?' said Piglet.
'Pom,' said Pooh.  'I put that in to make it more hummy.  The more it goes, tiddely pom, the more--'
'Didn't you say snows?'
'Yes, but that was before.'
'Before the tiddely pom?'
'It was a different tiddely pom,' said Pooh, feeling rather muddled now.  'I'll sing it to you properly and then you'll see.'
. . .
He sang it like that, which is much the best way of singing it, and when he had finished, he waited for Piglet to say that, of all the Outdoor Hums for Snowy Weather he had ever heard, this was the best.  And, after thinking the matter out carefully, Piglet said:
'Pooh,' he said solemnly, 'it isn't the toes so much as the ears.'

A House Is Built at Pooh Corner for Eeyore

'Oh!' cried Christopher Robin, wondering whether to laugh or what.
'Just the house for Owl.  Don't you think so, little Piglet?'
And then Piglet did a Noble Thing, and he did it in a sort of dream, while he was thinking of all the wonderful words Pooh had hummed about him.
'Yes, it's just the house for Owl,' he said grandly.  'And I hope he'll be very happy in it.'  And then he gulped twice, because he had been very happy in it himself.
'What do you think, Christopher Robin?' asked Eeyore a little anxiously, feeling that something wasn't quite right.
Christopher Robin had a question to ask first, and he was wondering how to ask it.
'Well,' he said at last, 'it's a very nice house, and if your own house is blown down, you must go somewhere else, mustn't you, Piglet?  What would you do, if your house was blown down?'
Before Piglet could think, Pooh answered for him.
'He'd come and live with me,' said Pooh, 'wouldn't you, Piglet?'
Piglet squeezed his paw.
'Thank you, Pooh,' he said, 'I should love to.'

Eeyore Finds the Wolery 

Love dew.

Join the Empire!

The following is a short essay that I wrote for my first psychological statistics exam.  I was pretty happy with it, so I figured I'd subject all of you to my limited knowledge on this subject, as well.



This was a picture I drew on the back of my test.
It sort of makes more sense in context of some of
the earlier questions.



Let's talk about empiricism, which is learning through observation.  With empiricism, we are limited to studying what we can perceive through our physical senses.  So, when we get bored of measuring the grams of nickel in an asteroid and want to move on to much more interesting things (humans), we run into an issue: humans are what they are because of complex phenomena that psychologists term constructs--things such as love, anxiety, and aggression.  In order to empirically study these grand (and yet very real) abstract constructs, psychologists must resort to operational definitions of these constructs: defining them by observable behaviors for the purpose of the study (for example, the measure of anxiety could be the number of times a subject bangs his head against the wall).

The main problem with operational definitions is that they can never quite capture the entirety of the construct.  A man can give a woman flowers, chocolate, hugs, kisses, rides to the grocery store, and still not love her; conversely, a man might do none of these things for a woman and still be completely devoted to her.  There are many intangibles--things below [edit: or above] the observable surface of life and its workings--that empiricism must, by definition, leave out of its way of studying the world.  Anything that cannot be captured by a merely physical description nor be replicated cannot be studied empirically.  The Prophet Joseph Smith's first vision of God the Father and the Son, for example, cannot be reproduced on command for observation; yet Joseph and thousands or millions of others insist that they know it happened.

Ladies 2

Only this one is more for the ladies: the latest addition to our Ladees Mans Wall

Scarrow is one dashing fella.  Yes, Strong Bad is also a Ladees Man.

Contributed by my doge, who is awesome.  And she makes awesome art.  Check out her stuff here!
Also, here are the letters that accompanied the poster:

Ladies

Here are some ladies that I've drawn in the last couple of weeks.

How is your Highness getting on with your Highness's roller-skating?

You know what's really frustrating?

Knowing that someone is in pain while you are in pain yourself.
Hearing the other's cries and wondering if he catches the echoes of your own.
Wanting to console and be consoled, but being held in check
by the (not unwarranted) fear that breaking the silence
will harm more than it will heal.

Let's go meet the pansies!

Look!  Under the tutelage of a more-experienced friend, I tried to use pastels!  This drawing might have made more sense if I'd put the stem in.

Don't worry

I don't scar very well, it turns out.  Last night at work, I managed to acquire some pretty cool-looking burn marks from some hot metal stuff, and today they're all but invisible.  Ah, well.