2/28/01       Too many writing projects these days.  I spent most of the night working on a grad-school application letter.  I taught a workshop on PhotoShop today; something about the blind leading the naked...   It's not over with, either, I get to continue the thing next Monday.  The great news is that my DSL connection finally arrived and it's ripping right along. Downloaded a Wipers album last night from E-music fast enough to listen while I worked!

2/27/01       I keep thinking about the difference between displaying photographs in the form of paper, versus electrons on a screen.  There are a lot of limitations here, but a lot of freedom as well.   I finally took a look at the celebrity polaroids by Michael Dare site.  As I suspected, it didn't do much for me.   Reading the photographer's description of his process, I could only picture a guy chasing around after famous folks like a lawyer chasing ambulances.

2/25/01       Such a weird weekend.  I just can't seem to focus, and I have far too much to do.   I keep waiting for things to turn over, keeping to myself pretty much, and trying to get it together.  Added some cheese to the gallery section; worked on some front-ends for the new Keepsakes site, but nothing looks right yet.  There's been a lot of talk on the Raindogs list about a site with manipulated polaroids of celebrities.  The more I think about it, the more I really hate the emphasis on heroes and celebrity that seems to grip nearly everyone.  I don't care about celebrities at all.  I like ordinary people.

2/24/01       I went to a party at Dr. Yoder's house tonight.  My chemistry was just too dragged.   I've spent a lot of time talking to old friends this weekend.  I should feel better than this, but I don't.

     I finished a paper that I'm fairly satisfied with about Northanger Abbey.  I placed it in the catalogue.   I created a Wollstonecraft front page.  I tried not to get too discouraged.

2/23/01        The usual ritual.   Wandering through the fine arts building, I noticed several drummers standing around beating-off.  Why do they constantly feel the need to slap their sticks against themselves?

     Restless agitation.  Woke up in the middle of the night and read William Styron's Visible Darkness: A Memoir of Madness.  It's only 84 pages, and an interesting read for me— providing contrast between unipolar and bipolar disorders.  I'd never read him before.  An old girlfriend was nuts about Sophie's Choice, but I don't read many modern authors.  I think Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s The Eden Express (about schizophrenia) is much better, if you're into that sort of thing.

     Though I'm not a huge fan of Thoreau, I thought the quote I added to the front page layout was fascinating.  It posits an interesting link between the vision of hell and creativity, as well as critiquing the gothic at the same time.  Sickly tapers and darkness visible are literary allusions that might slip by some folks.  But this all becomes a deepening web for me.

     Thanks for the feedback, Django.  I can always count on the Raindogs.

2/21/01        Eleven days and still no comments.   Got a checklist back from the instructor.  I passed the assignment, which was to construct three pages using five images.  At last count, this place has 64 pages with 122 images.   I've always been an overachiever.  No comments, just "check."  The cycle is turning.  I nearly fell asleep at 5pm.  Went out and bought a cappucino and PhotoShop 6.   I'm still sleepy.

     Got some sad news.  An old friend has hepatitis C.   Thinking about a couple of things to add to the site.  Maybe a gallery of dead musicians, since I seem to be collecting an increasing number of those in my past.  I've got a stack of what I call "environmental portraits" that I'm thinking of making my next gallery project, though.  Also thinking about writing a variety of front-end pages for each day of the week, or maybe random.

     Got a weird cartoon in my mailbox today.  I don't mean to go off on a rant here,

      BUT...

     I'm always amazed at the dilligence of the "pro-life" supporters around here.  I drive past an abortion clinic every day and there is always someone out front, rain or shine.  The troubling part is that it's always a man.  This seems to be a rather ineffective tactic; some women might think, as they approach the clinic, that a man forced them to make the choice to begin with.  If I were a woman, I wouldn't be too prone to pay attention to a man's point of view on the issue.   The labels are deceiving.  I'm "pro-life" and I don't think the government has any business legislating morality. Reproductive rights are a woman's issue that should not be decided by a bunch of angry middle aged men.  Once the swimmers take flight, I believe it's the host for that 9 month party who has the real power over the outcome.  Life is a good thing; the government exercising control over women's bodies is not.

2/20/01         It's funny how easily amused I am.   I received an e-mail last night from a student in the Gothic literature seminar regarding Gerard Manley Hopkin's concept of Inscape vs. Wordsworth's spots of time. We have been having a discussion about the more "spiritual" aspects of poetry.  This unassuming little comunication served several purposes.   First, it made me refresh my memory about Hopkins.  Second, it made me feel a little "needed" for a change.  The issues at stake seem to be seated deeply into human consciousness; in short, how is our perception of time and space different from "God"?  These are major issues which are addressed from unique perspectives by a variety of authors; I hadn't stopped to try to compare and contrast them before.  Thanks Leslie!

   For some reason I was thinking of these lines from Shelley today:

Many a green isle needs must be
In the deep wide sea of Misery,
Or the mariner, worn and wan,
Never thus could voyage on—

2/19/01        Everything is shouting at me today.  Walking to my car this afternoon, I was followed by a crow cawing like I just killed its mate.  At the car door, a squirrel started squeaking at me too.  What did I do?  Stopped by the local health-food market for a change of pace, and I was attacked by a Seventh Day Adventist in the parking lot.

     On the brighter side, I ran into Cody Short, a talented local guitar guy in the store.   Told him about the site.  If you find it, please e-mail, Cody.  I was up till four AM dealing with Netscape problems.  A few key pages weren't displaying at all.  Sometimes I feel like starting a jihad against Netscape.  As bad as Gates is, he doesn't hold a candle to the code nazis at Netscape.

     I put up the new gallery layout.  I forced a student in the web class to look at it, so I know that at least one person has seen the page now.

     Updating the homecoming queen story, although I was sure that Georgia would win due to her courage in showing a little leg, Nora's electioneering won out.  Oh well, Georgia seems to win everything else so she was due for a dissapointment, I guess.  

     Regarding the site design, I suppose I should be clear about what sort of things I'm curious about.  I have carefully designed this place to be friendly in different screen resolutions.  Different size images should load on many of the pages to keep all the content visible without scrolling (except in the text pages).  The menus are mostly frame based, to minimize code redundancy and speed loading once you get the basic frameset.  Does it work?   You should not see scrollbars on any of the framed pages if you maximize your screen.  I'm debating turning them off all together.

2/18/01        The new front page finally showed up!   It only took 18 hours; I still don't know what the deal was.  I'm starting to figure this coding stuff out.  Now if I could only figure out how to make the blackness lighten up a bit.   The cave has been pretty bleak.  Four pages today on Blake, and some nice improvements to the gallery interface.  I should put them up in the next day or two.  If no one has spoken up, perhaps I'll post a note to Raindogs about it and ask for beta testers.

2/17/01        I did a nearly complete re-write of the site.   I wanted to get some navigation things standardized, and I wanted to figure out a new way to display photographs.  I hate thumbnails, but for starters I have tried a layout that uses them.  ANY feedback would be appreciated.  It's getting pretty dark in here.

     The strange thing is that there is a time delay after I upload the files.   It has to be some sort of file-caching.  This file was updated immediately, but the front page has not changed!   The plot thickens. . . Now I find that if I type in "visibledarkness/index.html" the new page is there.   Now that's weird.

2/16/01   I'm just a little dissapointed by the response so far.   Not a peep, even from the usual suspects.  I tell myself that it's barely a week online, and remind myself that I get testy when my manic phases burn themselves out.   The primary utility of this is just the practice anyway.  I'm manually coding all of it, including this log.  By forcing myself to write a bit each day I'll be able to see just how badly my chemistry interfaces with the world.  

Another update —  the photographic exhibition I mentioned a few days ago is by Jack Radcliffe.  The photographs are even more impressive close-up.   I'm always interested in other photographer's points of view.  Radcliffe emphasises developing a relationship with his subjects.  I find this an interesting counterpoint to Cartier-Bresson and Kertez, whose primary relationship was to the world as a whole rather than to the specific.   This represents an interesting postmodern response.  I suppose I lean toward the old-school approach, because in establishing a very intense relationship with the world, you can't help but to quickly develop the sort of specific relationships that he values so highly.   At least that's been my experience.  His web site is well worth a visit.

2/15/01   In a strange continuation of the observation yesterday, this girl chased me around the student center begging me to vote for her.  I decided to immortilize her poster, since it keeps invading my space.  I was surfing around last night, looking at old Bakersfield band links, and stumbled onto a note that another guy I used to know was dead.  Not the usual causes this time; I heard he was fighting cancer a while before I moved back here.  It's amazing how little the scene back there seems to have changed.  Mostly it's the same names, even six years later.

     Went on a binge last night to cheer myself up; á propos de Paris by Cartier-Bresson did the trick; reading the accompanying essays really improved my morning.  Exploring further into Northanger Abbey this afternoon, I've got to say that I really like this book.   "Are you prepared to encounter all the horrors that a building such as 'one reads about' may produce?"

2/14/01     ¡Feliz Día de los Enamorados!

     Wm. Blake woke me up at 3am.  Oddly enough, it was the plate from MHH that I placed here a few days ago.  Somehow, it dawned on me that it was the most concise definition of his rhetorical style ever composed, if you unpack it a little.  That will be a big piece of firewood for the argument that I'm constructing about Jerusalem.

     Peeking through the windows of the main gallery at UALR, I see an exhibition going up that looks very interesting.  There are no details, no photographer's name posted or anything just yet.  Just some very interesting photographs.  I make it a habit to stop by the Fine Arts building at UALR to take a leak on the half-mile trek to my car each day.  I've noticed some odd things about the message display placards above the urinals there.  A month or so back, there was a flier with the query "Thinking of going Greek?"  Of course, it was a come-on for a fraternity.   This week, it was a girl's smiling face, pleading pensively, "Vote for me for Homecoming Queen."  Her expression was a bit disconcerting.  Advertisement in such a private area is a bit distracting, don't you think?

     The afternoon was more disturbing.   Sometimes I begin to feel invisible again.  That's a good thing while making photographs; It's not such a good thing when you are supposed to be a member of a community of sorts.   It's often the same story at school: "What are you doing here?"  Uh, for the most part I'm trying to learn something.  I never seem to have this problem in literature classes.   Regardless of the differing levels of familarity with period, or works in question, everyone is allowed to bring something to the table.  The easiest way for me to learn is by listening and talking to people.   I try to be polite about it, but I have precious little social interaction these days and I value even the slightest conversation that isn't just words on a screen.   Sorry for the piteous rant; it's just frustrating when I walk back to my mossy cell without hardly speaking to a soul all day.

     It started raining pretty hard as I left campus, and I didn't have an umbrella.  Some people may not need one "because there's always one around," but this is not the case with me.  All I ever seem to be able to count on is just what I bring with me.  Sometimes that doesn't seem like much; sometimes it seems like far too much.  The lasting reminder of the day was the parting shot as I walked away.  A tall goth looking dude said "excuse me" as he passed.  I thought to myself: "Need one? I've got plenty."   When I got back to the car, Hüsker Dü was playing: " She left me standing in the rain..."  Thankfully, that hasn't happened to me yet.   I have, however, been left on St. Valentine's Day.

2/13/01     In the wee wee hours, and I just can't sleep again.   I keep fussing and fiddling with the site.  I read some poems by Oliver Goldsmith tonight; I found "An Elegy for a Mad Dog" particularly amusing.  It seems that around 1760 there was an epidemic of dogs biting folks.   But Goldsmith's tale seems more like a friendship strangely gone wrong.

     I was visited this morning by the pest control lady. It was a weird and jarring experience; I was sitting on the couch, writing the first memo I've ever written, zoning out a bit to 16 Horsepower when I heard a voice and looked up to find her standing in my kitchen.   Once again, a case of the stereo being a bit too loud. Lucky for both of us I wasn't naked, or it would have been much more of a fright.

2/11/01     I've been having a lot of trouble sleeping lately.   I'm even more worried about it tonight.  I bit my tongue in my sleep, and it's been stinging like I stuck it to a hotplate all day.  I read book one of Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey tonight.  It's quite a trip.  All the guys seem to be concerned with the power of their horses and how well hung their carriages are.  The older generation just thought it shameless that people would go around in uncovered carriages; it was just so dirty.  Some things never change.

2/10/01     A week or so ago I finally decided to become master of my own domain.  I was tired of trying to write out my previous address; my handwriting is awful and few people managed to find my place, except those who wanted to trade music (sorry folks, I'm too busy right now).   I've been in a weird, frantic, busy sort of mind and you might say that I've been lost in the land of allusion.  So designing the place has turned into a minefield of allusions. The sort of "what's new" zone became "this Public Address."

     I've got mixed feelings about explaining everything; if you have to explain the joke, it isn't very funny is it?  But since I seem to get further out every day, I thought I would go ahead and explain this one. William Blake wrote a speech on scattered fragments in a notebook about the state of art in his time.  It has no title, but since one of the pages refers to "this Public Address" it has been referred to that way by generations of Blake scholars.  Since an Internet address is indeed a public address, and what occupies my mind most is the state of art, it seemed fitting.  Of course, since this ramble will mostly consist of fragments rather than completed thoughts, the name works on every level.