Exercise 5

Popcycle and Mystory

On page 19 of Electronic Monuments, Ulmer states that Mystory is to “map the path of connections that traverse these heterogeneous discourses, to locate the “existential refrain” that brings into alignment or attunement the institutions of family, entertainment, school and discipline (career specialization).” It is through the popcycle that we can connect ideas through multiple institutions. So we need to look at the bigger picture to figure out how these different areas have a common thread/link. This link can be anything, a phrase, photo, quote, image, scene, etc. as long as both institutions share it in some manor. In relation to this, Ulmer uses the example of “Y” in chapter 6. He says that, “these letters produce meaning effects in the collective beyond intent, without understanding, without individual consciousness” (p.151). “Y” is used in many ways, he compares it to a shape of a tree, as well as to the fact that we always ask the question of “why”.  He found a relation of “Y” to two completely different situations, the form of “Y”.

In the popcycle, the family institution is “a set of norms reflecting the preferred choices among all the possibilities available within the ideological identity categories.” While the institution of Career is when “one becomes an expert in a specialized field of knowledge” (p.21).

When looking at my “Career” and “Family” I think about cleanliness. In my job, it is my duty as a manager to make sure that everything by the end of the night gets closed down, locked up and is clean for the next day. I have to make sure that every area is cleaned and every time I miss an area/spot, I will hear about it the next day.

My family hasn’t been the cleanliest, but seeing my mother for so long get frustrated, stressed and tired of being the only one working hard to keep the house clean, her behavior transferred over to me when I started living in a house with my current roommates. They have no desire to clean, so I, like my mother get frustrated, stressed and tired of being the only one who cares about cleaning. I realized how bad it is and make an effort to change, to help my mom now more. I appreciate being cleanly now.

That transferred to my job, I also find cleanliness in my job at a food service very important, just as important as in the home. I get just as frustrated, tired and stressed at work when I do at my house with my roommates as my mom does at home when I am at work and I have to constantly be on all of my workers for standing around when I feel like they should know better and be able to clean themselves without being told all of the time. If they miss an area or don’t do it properly it also adds more stress on me because that means more of my time is dedicated to making sure that area is cleaned so that I don’t get in trouble.

Cleanliness is very important in both areas because they both cause me an extreme amount of stress unless it is done regularly and properly. They both have an effect on my health as well as others, if my house or work is too messy and not cleaned well it could make the customers or my house members as well as guests sick. I realize how large cleanliness is in both aspects of my life.