I think I’ve finally learned, after a good year and a half of trying, what transparent style really means, and more importantly how to accomplish it. Transparent style, of course, is the style of writing appropriate for most academic non-fiction. Rather than creative writing where you want to display technique, academic writing requires transparent technique. Any device used shouldn’t jump out at an average reader. Even quality writing, if it’s showy, it distracts from what you’re saying.

But that’s the kind of thing that your history and countless other teachers tell you before your first essay, not to mention 50,000 other times throughout a course, and unless you’ve had an epiphany on the subject, you (or at least I) probably don’t really know what it means. That isn’t to say you don’t think you don’t know…. I’ll stop there.

Anyway, I thought that was kind of cool. I was reading through a bunch of psychology papers today (from Webster’s psych student research poster session), and frankly they were all pretty crappy. Well that’s a bit strong. What they were studying didn’t interest me at all, and this is probably fantasy on my part, but I would like to think that college students aren’t just doing research projects to display their competency in methodology, but I suppose that’s precisely what they’re doing.

The kind of work I’m doing right now, all this gender theory stuff that I’m doing for my IB classes, all display process and all of that good stuff, but I’m doing work that I find interesting and important, original and unique. Gay culture in Jazz age Harlem. There are like a total of three people who’ve tackled this subject ever. And believe me, I’ve looked. There really aren’t feminist literary criticisms from a male perspective, not to mention gender criticisms from any perspective. I show process, I keep my self interested. One thing that got me in trouble earlier in my school/IB career, is that I’d try and be too contrary, and focus all of my efforts into being contrary, rather than what I should have been doing.

Now, as my recent experience with history essays has proven, getting a good grade isn’t about saying the “right” thing as it is about presenting it the right way. I have two perfect papers from history class, where I wrote from two positions that got little more than a scoff when I presented them in class. But I presented my ideas in the way he wanted, and I approached the whole deal with his process. I suppose. I mean I’d like to think I understand that epiphany better than I actually do. I suppose there comes a point with a lot of things where, if you take a step back things will fall into place. So that’s what really happened; but in some way I don’t feel particulay adept at articulating right now, I think that was really related to my original point. So there!

But I digress. Transparent Style…

What I think this means, basically, is that you don’t have to write stunning prose, you just have to write coherent prose. You don’t have to use creative constructions; you just have to make sure that your essays flow from one idea to the next seamlessly. You don’t have to invent crazy new syntactical phenomena; just manipulate the old ones for proper emphasis (which of course means avoiding monotony). This isn’t to say that the words I put up here, aren’t going to become more polished suddenly (that’s another problem completely). In some cases, TealArt is exempt, because I want my style to show because the whole point of a Journal is for the readers to learn about me through my writing, and style is one of the best ways I can think to do this.

But enough metatalk. Yes, metatalk.

I think/hope that this is one of those epiphanies where nothing actually changes, except my perception of difficulty. Sorry it took so long folks.

PS. Chris and I are doing some metatalk ourselves about TealArt and the like as we are want to do from time to time. We have some simplifications coming around in the next couple of weeks, so keep your eyes pealed. Cheers.

Well my computer drama continues, though there’s an end in sight. That’s a comforting thing, and I’ll write more about that when things get more sorted out. For now, it’s time for Link and Think.

The basic idea, is that on December 1st, website owners do the same thing they usuually do, except they talk about HIV/AIDS. So if you write a techie blog, then instead of posting news in mircochip development, you post news about retroviral drug development, or in the case of TealArt, we blabber esotericaly for a page or two before going to bed.

I’ve had lots of thoughts, trying to get some sort of entry together, and perhaps this is part of the reason I’m waiting until now. I wanted to say something about the upcoming Angels in America production on HBO, that I think is going to be very powerful, and has the potential to open some eyes. I wanted to say something about our perceptions of HIV/AIDS in terms of people who live with it. The impact of treatment, and the things we don’t talk about. (the drugs, the strain that it puts on family/friends, the durration and length). I wanted to at least make a point about realistic sex education, and the extent to which abstanance-only education only helps the virus. How heterosexim and homophobia force people into their closets, where transmission rates are huge.

But I guess, instead of being wordy, I’m going to let you do the thinking. Now you’ve seen what I’m thinking about, I’d like to know what’s on your mind. Part of this project in my mind, is that it brings discusssion of AIDS into an enviroment where it wouldn’t be discussed. So talk about HIV/AIDS, and think about it. Everyone has to deal with this epidemic somehow, and we could all afford a few brains cells for a good cause.

Cheers.

I’m visiting family for the holiday, and you know what that means? Cable TV (and lots of food, and family visiting, of course, but we’ll leave that entry for later.)

Anyway, with thanksgiving being a football holiday, we’ve been reduced to watching make over shows. We caught a Trading Spaces (there’s a 48 hour marathon going on, so tune in, if your interested.) which was an interesting experience, and I watched a Queer Eye, because I find gay guys acting unabashedly nelly, very cute and entertaining.

The actual content of the shows are kind of blah. I mean it’s a great idea and all, and I was really just trying to watch the gayness in the whole ordeal. But, one thing that we all (the family) found entertaining was that when ever someone sees the changes they say “Oh My God,” accenting the ëmy' about four times in a high voice. “Oh, my GOD!” “Oh MY god!” “OH my God!” and so forth.

I mean come on. What kind of self respecting straight guy says “oh my god” six times on camera. For that matter, what kind of gay guy doesn’t say “HFS” (as my father so tactfully put it), at least once be for the “oh my gods start?”

And the only thing I can think of is this scene from the forth of fifth UK Queer as Folk when there’s a surprise party for Vince’s (Michael from the American version) 30th birthday part, except he knows it’s a surprise party. It’s at Stuart’s (Brain) house, and Vince’s boyfriend or pack of friends (boyfriend = David/Cameron and friends = Alexander/Emmit and Ted) are taking him to Stuart’s but Vince knows about it, so for at least ten minutes Vince is saying “Oh, my GOD!” “Oh MY god!” “OH my God!” in an attempt to sound authentic when he fakes surprise at his party.

In the next scene Stuart cornerës him and says “howëd you know.” It was priceless. Having said all that, I’m probably remembering it all differently, but in any case…

I continue to maintain my opinion that its generally harmless and a great deal of fun. I did hear a lot of “lets make your bedroom a sanctuary,” and “it feels like a whole new me,” which was too touchy feely. But then I’m in this “embrace your labels, and make them work for you, instead of working for your labels” phase right now, so it’s all good.

Well it’s certianly been an eventfull evening. My instalation of windows which I’ve probably been using for the past nine or more months has finally bitten the dust. Mind you, my data is all nice and safe and it can stay there. It’s nerve wracking becasue I’ve agreed to go out of town this weekend, and my computer situation is compleatly up in the air.

See I want to instal Gentoo Linux on my PC and have that be my primary operating system. I really do have a lot of affection for Windows and all, but there’s little reason not to change, and I’d like something a little less touchy. For the moment (becasue the instalation of windows that I’ve been using for the past several months is dying slowly), I’m reduced to Knoppix, the bootable CD linux distrabution. It’s a nifty idea, and lets people get used to the idea of linux, and is a great diagnostic operating system that’ll quickly let people know that it really is Windows messing up, and not their processor blowing out.

As for primary OS aplications, it doesn’t work so well. My issue with it is that I have three NTFS drives, and no way to write data anywhere… even to a flopy disk. Now two of those three drives are backed up and ready to be formated for the eventual arival of Gentoo, and I’d really be happy to turn one or both of them into FAT drives, but, I can’t figure out how to do that right now.

Having said that, linux is prety nice, I must admit. The longer I sit here looking dumbfounded at the whole thing the less excited I get about the whole matter, but it’ll be nice. I hope. I’ve wanted to at least put on a linux distrabution for just in case, and I know that if I just layer over the old windows install with new stuff (becasue the problem is totally not that serious I think) I’ll never do it. So maybe some of this torture is self imposed, but I could find out that Gentoo is really awsome and that I’ll end up liking it and wanting to not go back to windows perminatly afterwords. But first I have to figure out what a stupid tar.bz2 file has to do with anything and how I get a CD to install from.

In any case, I bet you’re wondering why I’m going into geek babble on the Times of TealArt (it still feels a bit funny to call the main log that, but it’s kinda cool). Well I thought it might be nice to get a little more bloggy out here just in genereal, but also becasue I have an actual art acomplishment thing to talk about.

I’ve gotten myself involved with my school’s writing lab. It’s a nifty little thing… stay after school for a few hours and get work done in a nice enviroment, help other people think about their writing, and enjoy the company. The nice thing is taht, since people at my school are slackers and don’t really show up for this kind of ‘lab’, I get an English teacher at my disposal for a few hours a week, which is really nifty.

There’s this poetry contest that this english teacher was telling someone else (whose writing/poetry I’m not particularly fond of) about this really nifty and quaint poetry contest. So I thought, what the hell, I can pull together a few poems and submit them.

So I started writing a Poem, or at least trying to. It’s been a long process, and it’s taken a while, from the point of the first line, to a theme, to a couple of revisions, to some intresting developments interms of literary neatnesses. The end result is prety awsome, I think. So I’m going to have to put a little more effort into such projects in the near future.

I’m not so sure I’ll be posting this stuff here, but we’ll see. Also I should apologize now. There’s a prety neat wordprocessor in Knoppix (two or three actually, but one that I’m suited to; anyway,) the problem is they couldn’t fit the spellcheck dictionary onto the CD, which is really ok, given all the other things that they fit in around here. So this entry is assuredly rougher than you’re used to. Sorry about that folks. Some semblence of normalicy will return in due time.

The rest of the gay blogging community seems to have issued some sort of message in relation to the Massachusetts court case. Some say, “it’s about damn time,” and it is. Some issue congratulations, which are due. Some fear the backlash, which is only reasonable. I on the other hand (as I do with a lot of current events stuff) have waited a while to let things settle down a bit, so I can comment on it with the safety of hindsight.

My prediction is that we’ll see a proper marriage reform in the next few/several years. Why? Defense of Marriage acts aren’t going to stand up in the US Supreme Court, Scalia has even said that it seems. As for a backlash, waiting isn’t going to do anything… There are always going to be radical elements who will try and insight a backlash. Here’s something interesting from a recent Washington Post article:

We were afraid that pushing too hard on this issue would inspire extreme legislation," she said. “But by 1996 it was clear that we had achieved nothing at the federal level -- not even a simple employment nondiscrimination law or hate-crimes bill. The incrementalist approach, while a valid idea, had no effect. So why not be clear about what we need and what we should be given as a matter of birthright and a matter of being fully participating citizens? Set out all the goals at once.

The nice thing about extreme legislation is that it usually doesn’t live through the courts. Legislatures and courts almost always move in opposite directions of each other, and it seems to me that it’s easier to rally the community against extremism. For example, marriage, hate crimes laws, and employment non-discrimination (ENDA) are all very noble causes, but the community will have a mixed response; however, extremists are far more likely to provoke a unified response. Also, straight-allies are even more likely to see injustices when it’s really pronounced.

Let use race as an example. Before and during the civil rights movement there were these grave injustices for people of color, extremist legislation, and all that bad stuff. The community was able to rally, and enough white folks became allies, that sweeping changes like Brown vs. Board of Education, and the Civil Rights Act, were able to pass. And now, today. There are tons of race issues that still need to be addressed. But, there isn’t any extremism, and white people are for the most part oblivious to the problem. As a result? There isn’t a broad movement fighting racism today. While it’s certainly not that simplistic, on some level it is, and on some level the queer movement is facing the same sort of issue.

Don’t take me to mean that we need to radicalize in order to provoke a response in order to accomplish anything, but I don’t think we need to be overly focused on appeasing those with power and working to scare no one. Ultimately it boils down to my age old conflict. If you like what the HRC is doing but now how their doing it, can you in good faith support them? I don’t have a good answer, and I’m not sure I have anything to say to this that would further the debate right now.

Its no secret that the main point of education isn’t to teach content (or perhaps more importantly shouldn’t be to teach content) but rather to teach process skills and thought processes. That’s great, because answers change a lot, but the way to find the answers doesn’t really change. But what form do those process skills take, and dose this really make us better more knowledgeable individuals?

The traditional paradigm would seem to be all about accepting what’s come before. To internalize information in a very flat way, that doesn’t involve the learner. Accepting and not questioning, this kind of learning is still widely employed, but I feel my life’s been working under a different paradigm for a while. Basically, through my theory of knowledge class, through the whole Anytown experience, through my gender studies project, I’ve been forced to take something of a deconstructionist attitude towards knowledge, and I’m not sure I like this idea. Rather than accept, construct, synthesize information, and reach some sort of clarity, the opposite happens: I have to take a masse of information and break it apart into lots of little pieces. Science, gender, oppression, social science, math, sexuality, identity, and history, rather than build up knowledge, accept what is, we’re looking for all the exceptions, all the flaws and while this is a good way to approach knowledge, if nothing else it’s put a HUGE crimp in my ability to write effectively.

Within this paradigm, (which I’m starting to feel is just as limiting as the flawed one it replaces) I feel as if I’m obligated to deconstruct everything. To get in there and notice how it’s flawed, how the rules and categories society provides don’t apply much of the time, how bias skews so much knowledge/information and our interpretation of aforementioned knowledge. But of course everything is flawed, and this is inescapable. But we can’t or shouldn’t invalidate anything because it’s flawed, because then we’d be left with a whole lot of nothing. But you can’t accept knowledge as it is, because it’s flawed, because it’s not right.

I suppose the question I’m looking to answer, is “where does that leave us?” I can’t accept flawed information blindly, and I can’t deconstruct everything into an unrecognizable pulp. There has to be a middle ground, or so you’d think; but both ends of this spectrum seem to exclude each other. Ironically, the only thing I can think to say right now is “faith.” Not really faith in a god sort of way, but faith in an understanding that the information you are working with is reliable, and that your treatment won’t do any harm.

Not an easy task.

This difficulty is compounded by the fact that we’re not just talking about disciplinary knowledge here, we’re also talking about gender and about identity, which is where it gets really difficult. Because on some level I know what makes up my own identity, and I know what society expects, we all do; but on another more intellectual level I also know that this isn’t true of everyone. I know that there are exceptions that defy categorization. What do you do? Or, I suppose what can you do?

I’ve said in the past that the only thing you can do is keep on going, and endure. Because this chaos is what the world seems to exist in. Now there’s this whole order in chaos; and chaos in order idea, but I’m not sure how to apply that. So there might be an answer in there somewhere.

So ultimately, I feel stuck and lost. I mean I can continue to function and I can continue to be productive on some level, but I guess the real problem with that is that I don’t feel like that would lead to any progress, and just more of the status quo which in it’s way is part of the whole flawed traditionalism.

It’s a vicious cycle, and I can’t get away from it; even when I’ve tried to remove myself to discuss it. Also, there isn’t an end, every statement leads to a question and every question leads us somewhere.

Just as a general commentary, I’d like to say that it’s slightly ironic that I’ve identified this as deconstructionism, because that’s a critical school that I’m not fond of. (It should be noted that my opinions of critical schools exist in varying shades of disapproval). Additionally, I think I can finally understand existentialism, which is another paradigm that I don’t want to touch, but I can understand it now.

Since there’s no logical conclusion for this mess of philosophy and thought, I’m going to end this here, rest assured that I’ll get back to it at some point.

But before I go, I offer my most sincere apologies for this entry which must be nearly unintelligible. I look forward to the resulting discussion.

Last year when Brad opened up Link and Think for the 2002 Worlds AIDS day, I eagerly signed up. And then TealArt promptly crashed and was down until January. So we missed it, which was seriously not cool.

We’re at least going to try and make amends this year. For all of you who also operate weblogs/independent websites. I’d like to implore you all to take part. It’s a great idea and a good way to unify and take part in a worthy crowd. Check it out, join up, and we’ll be here on the first for World AIDS day Link and Think.

*Agenda:*

• New Skins (Rainbow Pride, Boy Looking, Blue Robot 3, and Stolen Skins)
• New Contributor
• Notify List
• New Site
• New Profiles
• Site Stats

*New Skins* I have a lot of new skin news. I reciently made up this new database powered skin engine that makes the whole skinning process a lot simpler. The actual changes on the site are basicly non-noticeable, but since I made this change I’ve started to add a new skin every week or so. There are currently 27 skins installed, which will probably lead to redisgn of how the Skin Page operates, but in any cases, I’ve added a number of different skins to TealArt that you might like to know about:

“Rainbow Pride” is a rainbow skin taken from a diary land template that I found using google. Yes, I’m shameless, but at least it looks cool. The skin uses tables and font HTML tags, so from a web-standards, HTML point of view the skin is horrid, but the surprising thing is that it renders perfectly in every situation I’ve tried it in, so go figure. Enjoy it, but don’t expect to much.

“Boy Looking” is a new skin that’s completely original. I took another Abercrombie & Fitch graphic, did some semi-creative photoshoping to it, and then put together a style sheet all by myself. There’s a Mozilla Version, and an Internet Explorer Version. I might put together some more color options together (this one uses warmer colors), and the sidebar is on the right. It’s a pretty cool design, so check it out.

“Blue Robot 3” Is similar in style to the “Robot Theft” Skins that have been around for almost as long as I’ve had skinning available on TealArt. It’s a simple, text based skin for those who like it, and its about as unoriginal and stolen as they come. The only reason I’m listing it alone here is because it’s the first TealArt skin to use three columns, and it paves the way for future skins to take advantage of some really pretty three column layout ideas that Chris and I have in the works.

The Stolen Skins, represent a surprisingly larger percentage of the TealArt skins. These are skins that we’ve taken from template repositories and turned into TealArt skins. Some have more originality infused than others, while some are downright shameful and were thrown together in mere moments. But they all present some sort of aesthetic quality that we like, and enjoy. These skins include everything that we’ve taken from Blue Robot, the Rainbow Pride skin, and two others that I took from random template repositories. Blue Robot skins are CSS and Text wonder pieces, the rainbow skin is fun, and the last two are both pretty good in a melodramatic boggy sort of way, so enjoy them if you want, but enjoy them for the novelty that they are.

• The Rainbow Pride Skin
• Blue Robot Three
• British Museum
• The River

*Notify List*

The version of quarto that we’re using on TealArt is a bit behind the version Amy’s currently working on. Rather than have to piece together the database regularly for the next couple of months (or really more than once per quarter), we’re going to hold out on our dated version and wait for something monumental. I mean the truth is that it works fine now, and I’m not in the mood to go off breaking things. One thing that I could never get to work quite right, until now that is, was the notify list.

Finally, I went digging for the code in question, and found a rather unsightly bit that was all commented out, and after some toying around and the introduction of the dandy mail(); function, I was able to “encourage” email notification. When I talked to Amy to brag tell her about my conquest, she told me she’d switched over a long time ago. Go figure, and I thought I was brilliant.

Long story short I’d like to offer you the TealArt Notifty Page which will let you subscribe and alter your subscription to the TealArt notify list. There aren’t and probably won’t be email lists for quotes and links without popular demand, and we have separate lists for The Times of TealArt and the Paradigm Brainfeed. I hope it’s useful.

*New Contributor*

While Chris and I have been really impressed with the progress the site has made in recent months, in terms of readership and in terms of the operation and content, we’re not satisfied with ourselves as the sole personalities of the site. While we kind of learned our lesson about the problems of starting an independent website bassed on the contributions of a large community with CollectiveArts and don’t want to have TealArt run into those problems, we would like to see a broader perspective here. So we’re still looking for TealArtists/Crew folks.

To that end, we’ve decided to add another contributor. Ryan Davis will be joining here to give his take on the world, just like the rest of us. He’s in the process of moving (to my fair city, as coincidence would have it) at the moment, but once he gets into gear, I think you’ll really enjoy his offerings.

*New Profiles*

Just a blurb to tell you that I’ve updated my profile. When I wrote the old one I kind of anticipated having it stick around for a while, but I suppose life and the world change too much for such things to remain true even months later. No new pictures I fear, but we’ll get something soonish.

Also Chris promises us that he’ll get some sort of text based profile up by the end of the evening (Wednesday November 12th 2003), but we’ll see, sometime in the very new feature we hope.

*New Site*

On November 5th the CollectiveArts.net domain expires. And thus ends a three and a half year endeavor to create a single website on the independent web that would provide a “home” for all the writers who wanted a professional co-operative web presence. It’s a great idea, and I hope someone else can do it, but after all this time, Chris and I got to the point where all of the things we wanted to accomplish in a website were already happening on TealArt, or could happen very easily on TealArt. (After we made the decision, the traffic to TA almost doubled, surprisingly enough). So now that CollectiveArts is gone, I’ve registered another domain that I’m going to use as a portfolio type site. It’s all forthcoming, but I just thought it’d be worth noting here.

*Site Statistics*

Nothing big here, and I’m not going to jinx myself by giving out exact numbers, but Chris and I have been really surprised by the increase in the traffic, really pleased. It’s nice to know that there are people reading the site. It’d be even nicer if people emailed us from time to time, or even commented, but we’ll take what we get gladly. Independent sites like TealArt rely on word of mouth to gain readership, and so we’d like to implore you all to use your mouths to spread the word. Thanks!

I think that about does it for this time. I hope this one does it for a while.