Bloody Tears of Agony

by Calvin Patimeteeporn

 

Professor Hall:

Imagine you are playing the game Tetris. You’re playing along but you slowly begin to realize that the game is only giving you the awkward (and devastating) “Z” shaped blocks and you can never make a line. No matter how hard you try, the blocks fall down in unwanted patterns, creating tiny spaces that prevent you from your goal. Even though these “Z” blocks have the same number of blocks (4) as the other pieces you need, you are not able to win.

Now retain with this image but add bleeding tears of agony.

This, Professor Hall, is what reading Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser is like:

If you think this is bad, you should see me when I read Twilight.

-

Continuing with my Tetris metaphor, while the number of “blocks” of the “Z” shaped blocks are the same as the others, its the arrangement that throws you completely off. Spenser wrote this epic (epic in its actual definition, rather than the modern slang) in a time where spelling was just as set in stone and mature as Stephanie Meyers’s writing ability. Thus, words he used were spelled completely differently than that of today, resulting in eye-bleeding-worthy confusion. Misspellings and archaic diction both contribute to the verbal pandemonium that ensues when encountered with non-literature savvy people. Much like the scenario in the game above and with Spenser’s work, you can’t win.

 

As well as confusing words, the structure of Spenser’s writing brings grief and frustration as well. Last week in biology, I learned that only 3% of the billions of base pairs in our genome actually code for proteins. This is much like Faerie Queene where basically most of the words used are, for the lack of a better term, junk. There is a small percentage however that actually contribute to story. In Book III Cantos iii, Glauce, the nurse to warrior maiden Britomart, takes said maiden to Merlin to seek help, as Britomart has been struck and sickened by love. Merlin explains to her that she is falling for her destined husband, Arthegall. He could have done so in maybe a few stanzas. However, Spenser decides to switch the characteristics of the wizard Merlin out with that of the Twilight saga, boring and far too long.

Faerie Queene is filled with enough odd spellings to make anyone think they are as illiterate as R. Kelly, and enough unwanted material that Matthew McConnaughey would think he has competition for the next  new romantic comedy movie. So here I warn you Professor Hall, approach Faerie Queene with the caution you would use with a rabid bear. Now if you will excuse me, I feel like this eye bleeding problem has gone out of control.

A Letter to the Professor:

November 5, 2009

Dearest Professor Hall,

I am writing you with deep regret to inform you that my experience of reading Renaissance poetry has been horrific beyond belief. The word on the street is that this Edmund Spencer guy is a genius and writes better than Shakespeare, but boy did I think I was a bad speller; this guy is terrible. That Cambridge degree must not have been worth much back then. I feel like I am reading one of my litter sisters’ 1^st grade papers except this one rhymes better.

I do not understand why he has to write like that anyhow. Why cant poetry people just straight up say what they mean? He makes everything so much more confusing and difficult by trying to make everything rhyme, and like every three words is an allusion to this, or an analogy about that. No one actually enjoys reading stuff like that except for maybe super English nerds like Professor Clayton. But what average 18 or 19 year-old would enjoy being confused for two hours trying to decipher the English version of Morse code?

Sure Professor Hall, I know you are a smart guy and all, but just like we [the entire student body] feel, I’m sure you could think of far better things to do with your life than attempt to read the worlds hardest poetry. And another thing, why is the book so freaking long? I mean I know we are not reading the whole thing in class but I could kill people with this book it is so huge. Where someone can find the motivation to write poetry for 10 years straight is quit impressive though.

I have to admit, the idea as a whole of each book being about a certain virtue. That is pretty cool. It kind of reminds me of the horror movie called SE7EN where a serial killer is out to get characters that represent each of the seven deadly sins. Including the horror part that is how I imagined reading this Renaissance poetry would be!

But you know what Professor Hall? Thank goodness for IT people like you because even though I might want to throw my computer across the room sometimes, without technology I would not have been able to use the amazing GOOGLE search engine or SparkNote this crazy piece of work as soon as I become totally lost. So thanks for all your hard work and I hope that since you’re a tech person you never have to go through this misery like we do.

All the best,

Adriana

The Faerie Queene For Techies

So….you’re about to read The Faerie Queene. You’ve got your book (or more likely Kindle) ready to go, and then you look at the file size, the terrible, terrible  spelling, and the tiny print, and you shut that book, and decide to ask SparkNotes instead. Well, Professor Clayton knows about SparkNotes, and the stuff you get there won’t be on the test. That being said, here’s a better guide to getting you through the longest poem ever written in the English language.

1. Reading the Farie Queene is an interesting experience, for one. The language is not quite Shakespeare, not quite Chaucer, and to say that it is not quite spell checked  would be an understatement. However, there is a meter to the words, and once you get the hang of it, the road to understanding what Spenser is trying to tell you is only marginally bumpy. Reading aloud works; it slows you down so you have time to understand one line before reading the next. The footnotes and word replacements help too, even if they mess up your reading rhythm.
2. Now that you can read the words, it’s time to figure out what you’re reading, and trust me, it’s about as far away from C++ as you can get. The Faerie Queene is, on the surface, a poem and a story, but a heavily allegorical one that uses characters, places, and events (sometimes not so subtly, either) to impart messages. Spenser’s messages are mostly concerned with the nature and different facets of virtue, along with praising Elizabeth I far too much for her own good. He’ll often link events in his stories back to classical mythology, but doesn’t always make the connection obvious. For example, the impregnation of Chrysogene, mother of Belphoebe and Amoret, takes place via a ray of sunshine, which connects her to both the Virgin Mary and Danae, a figure from Greek mythology who experienced the same thing. Or, take this allegorical chain of symbols for Elizabeth: Belpheobe’s name comes from Diana, the chaste warrior maiden, who is goddess of the moon, another name for which is Cynthia, which is a name Sir Walter Raleigh sometimes used for Elizabeth–so really, Belphoebe = Elizabeth I! Does this seem convoluted to you? Well, too bad. Spenser’s audience, the Renaissance-educated nobility of England, expected stuff like this in everything they read: deeper meanings, double, triple and quadruple connections, and thin or complex metaphors were searched for in nearly every word an author wrote. Spenser did not disappoint on this expectation, and as a result there are still books and dissertations and whatnot being published on him today.
3. Feeling a bit overwhelmed? Go on, open up SparkNotes. It’s ok, I won’t tell Professor Clayton. Now, read the canto summary. Doesn’t that feel just great? You’re reading modern, spellchecked English words written by someone who is still alive. AND you know what’s going on in the canto, which means it’s time to close that lovely Mozilla window and return to the Kindle. Getting a summary before you do the reading can be useful; when a new character appears out of the blue or something new happens, you’re not totally thrown by trying to process all of the story events, allegories, and language at the same time. Since you are pre-informed, you can focus on the language itself and the more nuanced bits in the plotline.  Just be sure to keep an eye peeled! There’s way more to the poem than can be covered by a single page summary, even if it is on SparkNotes.
4. Lastly, enjoy yourself. If you sit there and make the reading a drudgery, it will be one. Instead, picture the forest, or Britomart saving the Redcrosse Knight, like a movie, or even think about how awesome  different scenes might look when remediated to the Faerie Queene Online game. If you can engage yourself and take an interest in what’s happening, then you don’t need any other advice.

Dacia

Spenser for Dummies

Viciously, wrathfully, they descended upon him, surrounding him on all sides. Weariness began to spread through his aching arms, and the breath came from his mouth in short, shallow spurts, but he refused to give up. Blood gushing from his sides, he continued to deftly deal blows onto his attackers. Every time he made a move, wreaking a storm of violent wrath in his wake, they recoiled, death flashing before their eyes.

Now, we will read another account of this same incident, rendered in a different style:

“Mainly they all attonce upon him laid,

And sore beset on every side around,

That nigh he breathless grew, yet nought dismaid,

Ne ever to the yielded foot of ground

All had he lost much bloud through many a wound

But stoutly dealt his blowes, and every way

To which he turned in his wrathfull stound,

Made them recoile, and fly from dred decay,

That none of all sixe before, him durst assay.”

The second passage, an excerpt from Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, is wrought in a style so eloquent, so timeless, that it defies replication. It is a relic of a beautiful, long-forgotten way of speaking that has all but disappeared, erased by centuries of linguistic upheavals and sullied by the informality of modern slang.

But there’s one little problem: what, exactly, is Spenser trying to say???

There’s no doubt about it: in terms of sheer readability, the first passage wins hands-down. However beautiful Spenser’s prose may be, it’s not exactly ideal for your typical lounge-on-the-beach or curl-up-by-the-fireplace sort of book. Reading the The Faerie Queene is no light endeavor. I’m not just referring to the fact that the poem is of mammoth proportions, as large and as cumbersome as a high school science textbook. Rather, the biggest challenge reading Spenser lies in achieving basic comprehension. Slowly, painstakingly, the reader is forced to trudge through line after line of archaic Old English, struggling to uncover meaning somewhere within that jumbled heap of peculiarly-spelled words and outdated vocabulary (um, since when does “yode” mean “went”?). Even with a handy vocabulary bank, I still often find it necessary to stop and re-read (and even re-re-read) certain stanzas just to figure out what the heck is going on.

In this sense, The Faerie Queene, although undeniably eloquent, doesn’t exactly engage or immerse the reader as much as, say, Harry Potter would. In my opinion, reading Spenser feels more like piecing together a puzzle or solving a math problem than anything else; I spend too much time fumbling over the language to become fully engrossed in the storyline. But this could be because I am a decidedly right-brained individual who cowers at the idea of basic math computation. Discerning codes and patterns was always my demise on the Math portion of the SAT. Sudoku? No thank you.

On the other hand, someone like an ITS programmer—someone who is science-oriented and familiar with the complex language of computer processing—might gladly accept the challenge of decoding the bewildering, quirky language of The Faerie Queene. Aided with a math and science background, such a person would be more adept at picking up on the subtle nuances and patterns of Old English than a math wimp like me. Surely, if you are able to read binary code, decoding Spenser will be a breeze.

So, Professor Hall, perhaps you could be persuaded to take pity on a math-and-puzzle-challenged soul and make another one your impressive educational YouTube videos, this time entitled “Spenser for Dummies.”

-Anna Dickens

To Matthew Hall, or Whom it May Concern:

I am writing to inform the relevant parties that while attempting to peruse Edmund Spenser’s “The Faerie Queene”, a work reproduced and remediated by Vanderbilt University for the use of its students in its English 115F ”Worlds of Wordcraft” seminar, I found numerous errors that make the work incredibly hard to read and therefore difficult to utilize.  This difficulty ultimately lead to the spending of more time than necessary reading what this university seemingly deems “a poem”.  The time lost by Tyler Gilcrest U.G.S. (Undergraduate Student) relates directly to future dollars and cents in an exponential, but indeterminate, relationship (fig. A) and is due to the fact that he was forced to spend undue amounts of time with your organization’s product.

One error encountered during the use of your product was the presence of numerous and grievous spelling errors.  Spellings such as “gealous”, “farre” and “raine” (for the word “reign”, not “rain”, mind you) are clearly gross oversights in your efforts for remediation for the use of Vanderbilt students such as my client.  one particularly atrocious example, ”dreryhedd”, can only be speculated as to its actual meaning.  Not only do such examples occur, but they do so with such egregious abundance that it begs us to question who you employ for editing service, or whether you request that he take off his winter gloves when he types.  Such simple errors like said spelling errors reflects poorly on your efforts at this remediation.

Another problem with the product lies in the sheer length of the remediation.  The work is supposed to be a “poem”.   A poem implies a short work of fiction.  However this published version is longer than most novels.  In fact, our research indicates that this is the longest poem in the English language.  The length of this poem severely increases the amount of reading time.  And much of the excess is merely fluff.  The first stanza of Book III, Canto I, for instance, can be summarized the following way:  “The Briton Prince and Fairy Knight rested and were healed so that they could continue their adventures”.  Instead the author decides to take an inordinate amount of lines to explain this simple statement.  Again, the amount of money this has cost my client is inexcusable.

The following are suggestions to improve the remediation of the product so as to make it a more efficient and therefore desirable read:

1. Use spell check.  This functionality comes in most modern word processors.  Comprehension of the material increases greatly with such a tool.
2. Use a different format other than portable document format.  Not only does this limit the amount of mutability in remediation but it also limits the ability to perform suggestion 1.
3. Fire your editor.
4. Shorten the length of the work, add some visuals and/or vibrant flash animation, and make sure the final product can be understood by most 11th grade students.  Tyler Gilcrest cannot be bothered to think over allusions, archaic constructs or difficult vocabulary words.

With these changes implemented, both parties will undoubtedly be happier.  Any questions, comments or concerns can be returned along with explanation to this office and will be forwarded accordingly to Tyler Gilcrest U.G.S.  We appreciate your future compliance.

Regards,

Samuel Thompson

Office of Wrongly Assigned Students

Thompson and French P.A.

Do Work

“Oh man. I had to spend four hours last night studying for my chem test, and then I had a huge Spanish assignment.”

“I know what you mean. I had to kill like, fifty boars-“

“Wait, what?”

“Er, I said I studied for like, 50 boring hours last night.”

I felt guilty trying to explain to my friends trudging through the premed course path that while they were pouring over textbooks, I was playing an online game. I shouldn’t, but I do. I mean I know how tedious the games can get. The act of transcribing the experience to another student, however, doesn’t convey the same feeling.

In reality, playing online games for homework is just like any other piece of homework in that it’s required, you have to be on a certain pace, and you have to make connections back to your experiences later in class. Just like my friends who are “Mastering Chemistry” (a computer/online based system of chemistry lessons and homeworks), my success is dependent on my ability to use the game mechanics presented, have time to sit at my computer and work, and be able to connect to the internet. Without those three abilities, neither Mastering Chemistry nor LOTRO (or in this case, blog posts; sorry!) can be tackled promptly.  Granted, I would much rather play an online game like Lotro rather than memorize the steps of glycolysis. However, I know people who honestly feel the exact opposite.

And yeah, there are times I’ve played LOTRO rather than do something more enjoyable like a swim workout or play football with the guys in my house. But that’s just the way that homework works. Whether online gaming or online chemistry, it’s really not very different once you’ve experienced a quest that takes you 30 minutes of walking to find, 15 minutes of mashing the 1 and 2 keys, and a 10 minute trek back… only to lead to a similar quest as a follow-up.

 

-AlecSJ

A Walk in the Park

I have always been fascinated with the English language.  I am an avid reader, a crossword puzzle fanatic, and I pride myself on my diverse vocabulary.  Recently however, I was at a loss for words when asked to accurately define the difference between game and play.  I knew what both the words ‘meant’ but I couldn’t vocalize the root difference.  I took the logical next step and sought out official definitions of both words, they are as follows:

Game: “activity engaged in for diversion or amusement” (From Merriam-Webster)

Play: “recreational activity; especially the spontaneous activity of children” (From Merriam-Webster)

These definitions do not clarify the difference, as they are nearly identical.  We can agree that both games and play are active, and they are both for amusement, but what sets them apart? In order to explore the difference between games and play I have gone through a step-by-step visualization… just bear with it.

Its Saturday afternoon and you head down to the local park.  The air is crisp and the sun is shining.  You lazily stroll along a winding path until you come upon a group of toddlers.  The small children seemingly wander about aimlessly, but upon further investigation you realize that they happen to be chasing small butterflies.  You think to yourself that these children are at play, innocently engaging in a freeform activity for the sake of amusement.  You continue along the path until you come across jungle gym swarming with 9-year-old children.  The children seem to be participating in a game they refer to as cops and robbers.  At first the activity seems to be completely devoid of structure, but upon further investigation you find that there is a rudimentary rule set.  There are two teams, waging battle, but you would not necessarily consider this a game.  Children switch sides at will and they fail to follow any unified set of conventions.  Soon the activity ends as children begin to wander off.  This seems to be a more organized form of play, but it’s not quite a game.  Once again you proceed along the path until you come across a group of elderly gentlemen playing chess.  Surely we consider this a game.  The men play for amusement, but unlike the younglings they follow a strict set of conventions.  Each piece has a unique style of movement, limiting the player’s options.  The battle is waged turn by turn until one player reigns supreme, there is a clear end game.

Hopefully what this visualization shows us is that a clear set of rules separates games from play.  The toddlers activity is completely spontaneous, it is play in its most basic form.  The 9-year-olds are participating in something slightly more complex, as they are beginning to form a rule set.  Cops and Robbers is somewhere in-between random wanderings and chess.  The elderly gentlemen are completely dependent upon a rule set, and it’s the rules that separate games from play.

An Albatross Around My Neck?

With a name like Worlds of Wordcraft, it goes without saying that we play a substantial amount of video games in this class. So far, it’s been mostly contained to Lord of the Rings Online, but this is changing with the introduction of Neverwinter Nights 2. Now, I wouldn’t consider myself a gamer; I’m nowhere close to that. In fact, outside of what’s required for this class, I haven’t played video games once. I have, however, dabbled in video games over the years. I’ve owned a few game consoles, starting with the Sega Genesis, and including the Nintendo 64 and Xbox 360. Yet, not once has any aspect of my life, whether academic, personal, or otherwise, suffered. I play them when I have time, and enjoy doing so.

The games in this class, however, I do not enjoy. Don’t get me wrong; they’re both two great games, but just not my cup of tea. I guess that quests are just for certain people, and I am not one of them. This doesn’t bother me, nor should it bother the game designers, or the professors. After all, you can’t please everyone.

I don’t spend my free time playing computer games. This class  gives us that option, and suggests that we do. Under normal circumstances, this would be a conflict. However, one of the great things about Worlds of Wordcraft is its flexibility. For the most part, we’re only required to spend a minimal amount of time playing them. We’re encouraged to play more, if we desire, but not forced to. Our gaming experience has no effect on our grade, and I like it that way. These games aren’t for me, so I play them minimally. I’ll play them as much as I need to, and won’t forego my responsibilities in the class, but I won’t play them beyond what’s necessary. Therefore,  I don’t feel like playing games takes away from my personal and academic lives.

In fact, only once have I felt like playing these games was a burden. This occurred while I was writing the second paper. I needed all the time I had to write, and during that time was my one opportunity to go on a raid with the class and collect pictures of the old forest. Obviously a conflict arose, and I ended up writing instead. I was forced to compromise, and take solo pictures of the area, and of myself being eaten by the weakest of monsters. That being said, gaming for the class has not been an albatross around my neck.

-Matt Thumser

Striking a Balance

Seeing as how the online game has the ability to consume a player’s life just as the bottle can take over a drunk, the uneducated observer might conclude that our class is more or less engaging in the facilitated use of digital drugs.  While this assertion might not be too far from the truth, it is important to note that, just like any other addictive activity, moderation is key. By controlling the degree to which one participates in an addictive hobby, the user is able to reap most of the benefits while bearing a minimum of the costs. As I have been an avid gamer for almost my entire life, this economic process of moderation is something that has been more or less self-taught throughout my grade-school years. By pressing the power button, a player accepts nature’s unwritten agreement that, in a person’s full schedule, engaging in one activity will necessarily deallocate the time alloted for another. The solution (as it is more or less a personal formula) to a successfully-balanced life is to arrange said schedule such that work, play, and other miscellaneous activities are all optimized. Thus, playing LOTRO has had a minimal impact upon the rest of my life since I merely stuck it into the time slot that I had reserved for gaming, anyway.

As LOTRO has slowly shifted to Neverwinter Nights 2, so has my allocation of time in that slot. I still do all the work I need to do, and I still spend a healthy amount of time (and have a lot of fun) with my friends. But, my bipolar life is such that I have more fun overall when I spend an equal amount of my “play” time with friends and video games. After I’m done being a socialite, I go and isolate myself from the outside world with an absorbing video game. I have learned through experience that, for me, this method maximizes the amount of fun I have on both fronts. I head directly from the frat party to BioShock; from Assassin’s Creed I leave for the concert. I succeed (or at least I’d like to think so) in this balance because I am naturally motivated to do my work with the end goal of existing on one of these ends of the social spectrum, knowing that I’ll also get to travel to the other. By economically maximizing the amount of fun I have, I also optimize the amount of work I am able to accomplish via a strengthened motivation.

Yet, I am a rare breed. Many are unable to recognize that each necessary (and healthy) activity should have a minimum amount of time allocated to it. For example, just because I love a new game does not mean it would be wise to forsake my friends to play it; it merely increases the amount of fun obtained from gaming and, thus, my overall fun. The new game will only take full effect if strategically integrated into my life in the first place, so attempting to reduce its effect by allowing it to consume more time in my schedule would be a fallacy indeed. Unfortunately, many fall prey to the addictions caused by such absorbing games as LOTRO and World of Warcraft. They fail to allocate their time correctly, and the time originally reserved for the game expands, taking over other necessary activities in its conquest.

So how, then, does one know when enough is enough? When does one log out of the virtual world and once again exist in the real one? The answer to this question is personal in nature. I know people who play 6-8 hours of Halo 3 every weekend, yet still function perfectly in every regard. On the other hand, if I ask another kid to play 2 hours of Soulcalibur IV with me, I could easily disrupt his perfectly-balanced life, sending it into a chaotic downward spiral. Everyone simply has to figure out for themselves a manageable, sustainable amount of time for which to engage in their favorite activities. An enjoyable activity must not consume a person’s life, but it also must be present in order for any enjoyment to come of it. Although my analysis of a balanced life may sound economic and mathematical in nature, I assure you I don’t have a formula chart to determine how much Mass Effect I can play tonight. It’s just like learning to ride a bike; you may fail the first few times you try, but eventually you get the hang of it and develop a very useful skill.

-Billy Bunce

Hey! No running near the pool! -300 points!

by Calvin Patimeteeporn

The debate of over play and games have raised quite a debate in class, with arguments ranging from rules of games being the main construct of the definition of game to random inclusions of Newton’s laws of gravity. About 90% of the time when we talk about play v.s. games we bring up one defining factor of games: rules. While this is a huge part of the gaming as it basically provides the structure of games, we cannot define anything with rules as a game as we have done for quite some time.

Almost everything has rules, from basic etiquette to swimming pools, yet none of these can be considered as a “game”. This is, of course, the reason why we must narrow down our definition and stop subjecting life as a game simply because we “obey the laws of gravity” (This is for you Tyler). So, while rules play a part in gaming we must also consider another trait of games and not play: a removal of the individual from reality and into a gamespace.

A swimming pool, although filled with rules, is not a game as it does not actually transfer the user to another virtual realm. The pool doesn’t take the user into a fantasy world where there is an objective, goal, or conflict, it instead just gives you a hole with water and rules. Hardly a game. Thus, we can’t consider the difference between play and games as simply rules, but rather the transportation of the user.

For instance, games such as Grand Theft Auto take gamers into a different world with different rules. A player in Liberty City in the game are subjected to different rules and privileges that normally wouldn’t be socially acceptable in real life, a key difference between games, play, and life.

“In hindsight, I can see why this may have possibly been a bad idea”

-

That being said, I conclude that play and games are, indeed, different, but the difference between them are not just rules but rather an inclusion of a gamespace as well. A classroom has rules but it is obviously not a game (or play for that matter). Thus, these arguments of life being a game or trampoline also being a game due to the laws of the universe, can be refuted as neither of which bring the user to a gamespace.