When I told myself that I needed to blog tonight (I mean I had already done the reading), I really did not (still do not) want to.  I'm tired, it has been a rough day, and, quite frankly, the reading I did for tonight's blog left me with nothing.  Not sure how I ended up with TWO readings that left me feeling nothing two nights in a row, but it has happened.

I read Dean Allen's "Reading Design" for tonight, and I highlighted all of three passages.  From what I can tell, Allen is ranting about web designers lack of consideration for the reader when they choose how to represent fonts. Allen argues that the education of many of the students he teaches "had plainly focused away from what I consider the primary goal of communication design: to make vital, engaging work intended above all to be read.  To use design to communicate" ("Reading Design"). 

The one thing that I did find useful about the article was Allen's "An Entirely Incomplete List of Things a Non-Illiterate Designer Should Know Before Being a Designer" at the very end of that article.  That is worth printing and putting in a place where you'll always see it if you have plans to be or are a designer.

That is all I have to say about this article.  It ain't much, but I at least I read and blogged.

Still trying to decide how to go about doing this project.  I believe it will begin on May 1.  I have been considering where to start with the readings.  There are so many things I want to read that are on my bookshelf staring at me right NOW.

But, for now, I'm going to discuss something I am reading for a Mentoring Meeting tomorrow.  The article is called "An Essay We're Learning to Read Responding to Alt.Style" by Michael Spooner in AltDis: Alternative Discourses and the Academy.  For me, the shaded blocks are examples of how someone attempting to edit an alt.style might try to force the writer back into a more conventional or accepted discourse style.  This Meta-commentary or meta-narrative really drives home for me the importance of understanding a piece of writing written in this style.  This type of discourse finally places some of the responsibility of making meaning on the reader.  I like that.

There were times that I asked myself if this could be considered a queering of the text, but I'm not certain.  Is it a queering of academic discourse, forcing the reader to interact with the text, ?  I don't know.

My favorite "bubble joke?"  "How many copyeditors does it take to screw in a light bulb?"  Response: "Not sure whether you mean 'change a light bulb' or 'have sex in a light bulb.' Consider revising for clarity?"  Hardee har har

Favorite word: essayistic.  God I love writers who are not afraid to make up new and innovative words.

And, I've just figured out where to start my project.  This article quotes a book I started a while back, but did not get to finish.  I will pick up and finish Janet Murray's Hamlet on the Holodeck.  A seminal piece for one of my main areas of interest.