Queen has been an a group I have listened to since I was young. They were my mothers favorite so I grew up listening to them, Heart, Fleetwood Mac, the list goes on and on. Freddie Mercury is partially remembered for his outrageous outfits. He gave not a care in the world to what others thought of him, and he always seemed like he was having fun.

His attitude he displayed to the public fit in with Oscar Wilde’s quote beautifully. And he fit the quote while he was alive as well, performing and living his life until the very end.  On the opposing side we can take Virginia Wolfe. Wolfe was laden to a large amount of tragedy and was unable to break away from her past and live her life in the present. She was consumed with sadness she ended up taking her own life. She was a beautiful writer and could have accomplished much more than she did, but she was not given that opportunity. And she did not seize that opportunity.

This photoshop did not take long to make. I used Picasa 3 that I had already downloaded a couple years ago. I resized the image, and then used a text box to insert the quote onto the picture. The hardest part about this assignment was finding the third person. Finding someone who is famous that just existed more than actually lived is difficult. But I remembered reading the suicide letter from Virginia Wolfe in high school and I thought that would be a fitting contradiction to Freddie Mercury.

Triple Troll Quotes

For this assignment, I decided to do the “Troll Quote” prompt. We were told to take a picture of a famous person, add a quote by a second person, and attribute it to a third, unrelated famous person.

I decided to use one of my favorite quotes by Ernest Hemingway, “write drunk, edit sober.” That was the easy part. The hard part was finding a picture to use it with. I played with the idea of using a picture of Jack Keroac or Allen Ginsberg, but I wasn’t sure if they were immediately recognizable. So instead I went with my boy Oscar Wilde, because I feel (maybe mistakenly) that he is rather recognizable. And finally, I attributed it to William Faulkner. Why, you ask? Well it’s simple: I have no idea what William Faulkner looks like, and I bet a lot of other people don’t either. In addition, unless you have slugged through one of his books or are an English major, Faulkner is one of those authors where you can recognize the name but can’t give a whole lot of identifying characteristics.

Maybe it’s the literary nerd in me, but I love this. All three authors used in this project are known for their drinking habits; but what is particularly interesting is that Wilde was the only one who would actually while writing. Misleading as Hemingway’s quote may be, he took his craft very seriously. It may be the only thing he took seriously. Faulkner was similar in that, despite being a raging alcoholic, he would stay sober while writing and then binge when he was through. Wilde was a huge fan of absinthe, and often talked about how it was necessary to his creative process, which is why I found it fitting to have him as the (literal) face of this quote.

I made this in Photoshop in about ten minutes, using a photo I pulled from Wikipedia.

I wanted to start warming up with a nice “Troll Quotes”assignments, one of my all time favorites. This troll quote is actually inspired by the theory that the hard-ass character Major Bill Rawls in The Wire is ironically named after the political philosopher John Rawls. And after reading that John Rawls was from Baltimore, I was all but sure. That said, I was sure others have thought about the connection, and after a quick search on Google I confirmed that fact.

Like Simon, Rawls was interested in institutions, particularly institutions of justice. His writings also frequently address the issue of rights and liberties, a subject that often comes up in The Wire (the show is something of a crash course in all the regulations that prevent police from conducting surveillance without a warrant, or committing other civil-liberties violations). That is where the positive parallels end, however. Rawls the philosopher was an idealist, deeply committed to a vision of justice as impartiality. The Wire by contrast is the opposite of idealistic, and portrays a moral universe in which impartiality is a distant dream.

I was struck by the connection, and A.M Lamey frames it perfectly in the above quote. Rawls the philosopher suggests philosophy is above political bargaining or calculated interests, but the universe of The Wire stands in stark contrast to such a theory. Major Rawls being part and parcel of the alternative, so I was sure to source him for the other Rawls’ quote. As for the image, I figured the institutional representative of justice in this series, Judge Phelan, would complete the triumvirate of this troll quote nicely. While appearing austere and learned in his book lined office and three-piece suit, he’s the epitome of the institutional machinations that have usurped any vision of justice in the world of The Wire.

As for the process, I opened up the image in GIMP and added some yellow text so it would stand out. Given the background had varying colors, I used the Filters–>Light and Shadow–>Drop Shadow option to make sure people could read the text even when the background was light (you can adjust the value based on how much shadow you need). It’s a simple finishing touch that helps you avoid looking like a total amateur.