Behold: Kim Jong Il, "The Illmatic's" Livejournal.
http://users.livejournal.com/kim_jong_il__/
I'm sorry for last-minute posting my useless funny shit instead of substantive things we could actually use for class, but I'm swamped, and if you could all use a laugh as much as I can at this point, go read the above Illmatic's "LJ." Basically, it's comprised of farcical AIM conversations between KJI, Kerry (JFKPtII), and Dubya. Really, really funny. I especially like the polio one...
Monday, December 11, 2006
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Zlad - Elektronik Supersonik all hepped up on Mountain Dew?
Zlad - Elektronik Supersonik Video This is exciting evidence that the"newer media" of the blogosphere (Youtube or, should I say Google Video) is now shaping "old" media--television commericals. Ah, le sigh. The angst-fraught existence of a trend predictor. And I fear that the video above is not working, so link to here and WATCH! | |
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Badger Badger Badger!
(Watch this if you're interested in understanding the layer of meaning of this post title that pertains not to TrinBlogWarriors' reading material, but I warn you: it's kind of like audio/visual crack).Because I cannot seem to catch up on reading for anything else (thesis reading? All of Pride & Prejudice in 24 hours, you say? Psh. Piffle), that tonight I caught up with blog class reading makes me feel like a veritable superstar and entirely justified in overindulging in Turkey Day comestibles and tomorrow joining the squalling hordes of consumers to justify retail minions' anxiety over the most terror-striking, awe-inspiring of all workdays known as Black Friday.
I read in entirety Badger's lengthy and remarkable essay . You tell me remarkable, and I'm usually dubious, but this article really is both of those things. I found informative the section on photobloggers (besides, hchamp's stuff is really quite nice), and the discussion of photo continuums and their capacity for storytelling with both clarity and ambiguity was a point well made. I especially liked this as a summation of the wedding of photo/video/text in the blogosphere, so kudos to Badger for this:
"The blog medium is one that allows disparate elements and contrasting styles to co-exist harmoniously, rubbing up against each other and influencing the way we respond to the other elements contained there. It is hard to think of another publishing medium that creates such a successful blending of tone, style as well as the public and private aspects of the one person."
But of course I found elements with which to contend. Muahahaha.
Exhibit A:
"weblogs deliver bite-sized portions of information on a daily basis to an ever expanding audience. Weblogs are the conjunctions of the Internet: the ands, the buts the ors – they add to online conversations, refute them, or provide new perspectives altogether. "
I'm a bit puzzled as to what these two sentences actually mean. To me, this assertion of Badger's reduces blogs to mere fragmentary slices of petulantly random interjections. This invalidates blogs just a wee a bit, doesn't it? Is that Badger's intent? I, for one, believe blogs are more than just conjunctions of the internet (even though that metaphor is cute); can't they be regarded as entities in and of themselves? Come on! Legitimize blogs! Waaaah!
< / end petulantly random interjection >
Ah. And on to one of my most favorite topics: the blog as public or private medium/monologue or dialogue. Badger writes:
"The Internet feels like an intimate space. We tend to view it on our own, and up close; the computer screen is like a face, watching us as we work. The weblog format propagates this sensation; the first person narrative with its confiding tone can make us feel that we are partaking in a one-on-one exchange."
It seems to me that Badger starts off talking about writing blogs, then somehow conflates writing blogs with reading blogs. Logistics aside--I wonder how many bloggers actually intend for what they write to feel like a one-on-one exchange? When blogging, I, for one, do not feel as though I'm interacting with a sentient confidant. The blog is a comfortingly blank confessional space, not a kindly ear with an inherent bias or repository of presuppositions about me or what I say. I write with the understanding that others may read what I write, and even some vague, fuzzy notion of who those others may be; yet I am not talking with them--I'm talking at them. I'm collecting and spewing out all of my thoughts on my confessional space before the eyes of observers get to comb them-- in effect, observers have no choice once I've published (save halting their reading) but to let me talk at them for a little while before collecting up their own response. Blogs provide a nice way to ensure that all of my thoughts get presented and everything I want to say is given some voice before I get cut off by anOther's aside. It's a way I can fully think through my ideas and express them before an interjection of mine or anybody else's intrudes and sours or simply changes the mental riff. I'd contend that while it's being written an original blog post (unless it's a response to something read in another post) is NOT a one-on-one conversation--it's a mental dump created with the awareness that, when all's said and done, somebody may want to hop on board, create another post, and turn it into a conversation. A single blog post in its creation stage is not inherently a conversation, but an open ended invitation to begin one that reads something like, "Here's what I'm thinking. I'd be completely amenable to speaking with you about it/defending my ass/kissing yours, so please by all means do reply if you like, but don't feel obligated."
I also really, really liked this Rousset quote Jill of jill/txt pulled and translated from French:
"...this temporal position, which makes the narrator contemporary with what he is telling, tends to make the narration itself into the action . . . The epistolary instrument makes it possible to imagine a narrator who would tell nothing, who would have no other object than his own writing and its effect on himself or others."
Hmm. Narration as action is not a NEW thing--(don't make me dive back into the 18th Century and earlier)--but the idea of a narrator as a being telling his own writing, and caring for nothing but his own writing is fascinating to me. On the one hand, this thought seems like it may punt the act of blogging into a territory swollen with narcissism (I concede that this is a realm in which it may rightly deserve to dwell), but it DOES make for the ultimate in attention to rhetoric, no?
Anyway. I think I'm through being an internet scribbler for the evening. Perhaps I'll start Pride & Prejudice early and buck the poor habit of last-minuteness I've bred into myself over the years. We'll see. In all likelihood, I'll go lay on my bed and stroke my poor cat Gemma, to whom I don't pay nearly enough attention, and read Barth. :)
Happy Thanksgiving, y'all.
I love cycles. They're so...cyclical.
Maybe we talked about this in class? It's entirely possible, so if I'm jacking somebody's thought, slap me on the knuckles and I'll be glad to give credit where credit's due. This just struck me tonight, passing over something in this week's reading.
Blogging is a new oral tradition--perhaps the only kind of oral tradition a people bred to be so isolatory in nature can truly maintain. We've already established that in the 2006 here-and-now cyberspace is one of the few only spaces in which humans really share and interact. I for one cannot picture a gathering in Central Park 'round a campfire for the sole purpose of people telling stories. Psh. Kum-by-freaking-yah. So instead we've got the new greenspace: we've got the internet. We've got blogs.
So picture this: we members of the new frontier sit around our campfire out there in Deadwood. We roast our weenies, we make s'mores, we drink and we talk. We make fun of one another and we make eyes at one another, and we tell truths and lies and stories, yes? They start out as anecdotes; some are immediately forgotten and some are pleasant to mull for a short period of time, but some? Some stories, some tellers, get remembered. If the weaver of the web is good at his craft he draws a crowd--the same listeners come back for more, perhaps bringing new ears, eyes, minds with them, instating the storyteller with cred and lending him a type of tribal power. If the yarn he spins is as good a tale as he is a storyteller, perhaps even after he's stopped telling that story and moved on to something else, or maybe stopped telling stories altogether, the legend he told continues to be diffused through time and space.
Still there? Ach. You're so sweet.
'kay. So.
In a similar--(though not analogous) --fashion, bloggers sit around and tell one another stories. Some of the really fine tale-tellers get a following or get syndicated, or just become really really cool. Some of those really good stories become cult items. Great posts (cyber-tales?) may be linked, replicated, and the original stories retold. Snippets of the original story relayed by Legend Master #1 might be used to supplement another blogger's fresh story. Thus, the yarn that that one man once spun is hyperlinked, alluded to, or semi-consciously accessed by another blogger... and another... and another, helping to architect the collective conscious of those in the new frontier.
Maybe we ain't got lips out hurr in Deadwood to employ in relatin these stories (okay, so not ones that get heard or seen minus video), but what we do have are fingers and what we can do is link and retype, passint those "legends" down and across in our new communal space, in new reorganized (and perhaps waaaay more far-reaching) tribes.
I promise I'm going to actually write on topic next and bring my whimsy up short of taking me wherever it wills.
Blogging is a new oral tradition--perhaps the only kind of oral tradition a people bred to be so isolatory in nature can truly maintain. We've already established that in the 2006 here-and-now cyberspace is one of the few only spaces in which humans really share and interact. I for one cannot picture a gathering in Central Park 'round a campfire for the sole purpose of people telling stories. Psh. Kum-by-freaking-yah. So instead we've got the new greenspace: we've got the internet. We've got blogs.
So picture this: we members of the new frontier sit around our campfire out there in Deadwood. We roast our weenies, we make s'mores, we drink and we talk. We make fun of one another and we make eyes at one another, and we tell truths and lies and stories, yes? They start out as anecdotes; some are immediately forgotten and some are pleasant to mull for a short period of time, but some? Some stories, some tellers, get remembered. If the weaver of the web is good at his craft he draws a crowd--the same listeners come back for more, perhaps bringing new ears, eyes, minds with them, instating the storyteller with cred and lending him a type of tribal power. If the yarn he spins is as good a tale as he is a storyteller, perhaps even after he's stopped telling that story and moved on to something else, or maybe stopped telling stories altogether, the legend he told continues to be diffused through time and space.
Still there? Ach. You're so sweet.
'kay. So.
In a similar--(though not analogous) --fashion, bloggers sit around and tell one another stories. Some of the really fine tale-tellers get a following or get syndicated, or just become really really cool. Some of those really good stories become cult items. Great posts (cyber-tales?) may be linked, replicated, and the original stories retold. Snippets of the original story relayed by Legend Master #1 might be used to supplement another blogger's fresh story. Thus, the yarn that that one man once spun is hyperlinked, alluded to, or semi-consciously accessed by another blogger... and another... and another, helping to architect the collective conscious of those in the new frontier.
Maybe we ain't got lips out hurr in Deadwood to employ in relatin these stories (okay, so not ones that get heard or seen minus video), but what we do have are fingers and what we can do is link and retype, passint those "legends" down and across in our new communal space, in new reorganized (and perhaps waaaay more far-reaching) tribes.
I promise I'm going to actually write on topic next and bring my whimsy up short of taking me wherever it wills.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Cowering leads to buried treasure
I love this.
On the topic of blog rhetoric (real post on that to come):
To escape the matriarch downstairs who terrorizes me as only a bossy 5' grandma can do, I ended up cruising the words of Alchemy Anyone. Glorying in the polished prose of his posts brought me up sharp, made me remember to value the words I put in a post, on a page, in my mouth. It made me remember that writing is an evocative, inspiring, illuminating art. It made me ashamed to call myself a wordsmith. (grin). Whilst hiding from your family (oh don't even tell me you're not--I KNOW you are. I SEE those shifty eyes! Why did you bring your laptop in the closet, hrrm?), I highly suggest you go read some of slaghammer's sometimes poignant, sometimes irreverent, but always exquisitely penned postings. (man, I alliterated the hell out of that one. I can now die grossly self-indulgent. whew).
Also, I just saw Colin waiting at a red light at the intersection of Brace Road and North Main in the WH. Stalkers who lust after the make & model of the McEnroe mobile, apply within. We might be able to arrange a swap--acceptable forms of payment include chocolate covered pretzels, red wine, gym memberships and pretty scarves.
On the topic of blog rhetoric (real post on that to come):
To escape the matriarch downstairs who terrorizes me as only a bossy 5' grandma can do, I ended up cruising the words of Alchemy Anyone. Glorying in the polished prose of his posts brought me up sharp, made me remember to value the words I put in a post, on a page, in my mouth. It made me remember that writing is an evocative, inspiring, illuminating art. It made me ashamed to call myself a wordsmith. (grin). Whilst hiding from your family (oh don't even tell me you're not--I KNOW you are. I SEE those shifty eyes! Why did you bring your laptop in the closet, hrrm?), I highly suggest you go read some of slaghammer's sometimes poignant, sometimes irreverent, but always exquisitely penned postings. (man, I alliterated the hell out of that one. I can now die grossly self-indulgent. whew).
Also, I just saw Colin waiting at a red light at the intersection of Brace Road and North Main in the WH. Stalkers who lust after the make & model of the McEnroe mobile, apply within. We might be able to arrange a swap--acceptable forms of payment include chocolate covered pretzels, red wine, gym memberships and pretty scarves.
Monday, November 20, 2006
Miscellaneous Maundering: a Coffee-like beginning, pondering persona, and the story with slothsinabox
So, post-class, I'm sitting at my desk in Summit, sipping a rebujito (for y'all that don't hablar el espanol, that's a mixture of red wine and citrus soda--in my case, Sierra Mist. Really quite delicious; I highly recommend it), and pondering how on November 20th last year, at this hour U.S. time, I was fetally scrunched on a too-short couch in Germany in the dark. Freezing, isolated, I cried carefully, quietly, into borrowed blankets, curled across the room from the only man for whose love I've ever truly ached. I didn't reach for him, he didn't reach for me. Ten feet intervened and I let them--spatial anxiety lasted four nights. By the second, I'd stopped crying and pulled up my coat collar against the cold, literal and figurative. And you know--I never put up a fight. I'd like to think I'm smarter than that now, but until I'm put in such a situation again I s'pose I can't be sure. I do know that I was vulnerable then, soft. I believed in his well-intended ambivalence, and he believed me when I said it was okay. I'm not soft now. I'm keen as a gimlet-point and unequivocating. I am skeptical. I draw a steady bead on the foreheads of all y-dominants and say "Here. This is me. You don't like it? Walk away, because I'd rather be alone than dishonest." Those're all things for which I simultaneously congratulate and loathe myself. Because of class, I'm pondering persona and true self, thinking how different I am now, yet how fixed I've always been. Funny how 365 days can change both so much and so little.
Secular confessional* indeed.
In class, Kirsten (or maybe Sara?) posited that the pseudonyms we select for ourselves tell something about who we are. I smirked to myself; slothsinabox, I thought? of course that's indicative of me. (*snark*) In some ways it is, in some it isn't. I am not lazy. I do not think inside the box. The name slothsinabox first positioned itself in my head this summer at my fabulous internship with marketing and design firm Fathom. Anthony (vegan, significant other to a fantastic vegan chef of whose cookbook I am editor, an advocate, a very original, leftofcenter individual and one of my favorite people in the world, ever) and I were talking about the band Mogwai. I Google imaged mogwai and came up with the picture that you now see as my avatar/icon/whatever it is. "Oh my God!" I squealed, "I LOVE them. They're so real and so fake at the same time!"
Highly intelligent statement, Caitlin, congrats.
Do I sound like a valley girl? Sure. But was the dimwitted observation unwittingly appropriate? I think so.
I hate being pigeonholed. In fact, I refuse. I have consciously always been just a bit contentious. I like being somewhat of a contradiction. I am a well-dressed nerd. I am a socially competent dork. I am a confident insecure person. I am 100% overanalytical English Lit major (that one I won't argue). Slothsinabox? Taken at face value, it's not at all me. By presenting such a bizarre internet persona, I suppose I unconsciously challenge people who visit my blog to untangle what that actually means. I am whimsical (in the words of smart and savvy lednik); I like irreverent, bizarre things. At the same time, I'm also cripplingly occupied with unpacking the meaning behind every single action and thought. I am serious and pensive while being lighthearted and entirely unable to carry on a conversation without making a joke of myself. So I guess slothsinabox is indicative of who I am--but only if you dig. Or if you read this entry. (grin).
As class wrapped up tonight Colin said that he didn't know what kinds of implications come with blog anonymity and people allowing themselves to, in a rather self-aggrandizing manner, adopt an exaggerated version of themsleves. I for one hope that permitting these exaggerated blog personas to co-opt at least a small portion of our realtime existence will allow us to have more authentic interactions with one another. If I had a nickel for every time a little more honesty would've fixed an unhappy ending or an unfortunate situation that only occurred out of insecurity or a dogged, half-hearted allegiance to social conventions, I'd be a rich woman without any student loans and a fleet of jet skis. Not to mention two bionic hips.
I sincerely hope that the blogosphere's respect for honesty, forthrightness and tendencies towards the incendiary and blisteringly honest make for more authentic face-to-face human interactions. I'm going to watch for it. I'm going to promote it much as I'm able. We'll see how it goes.
Now, to enjoy a night of college before I'm home for days, working on my thesis. Turkey, mom and dad. I'm happy. I'm excited for my last Thanksgiving return home as a student for a while (hopefully, next year will see me in Spain, teaching English).
Man, I really do love blog class.
*sophisticated and apt expression brought to you by the genius of Trinity's own David Calder.
Secular confessional* indeed.
In class, Kirsten (or maybe Sara?) posited that the pseudonyms we select for ourselves tell something about who we are. I smirked to myself; slothsinabox, I thought? of course that's indicative of me. (*snark*) In some ways it is, in some it isn't. I am not lazy. I do not think inside the box. The name slothsinabox first positioned itself in my head this summer at my fabulous internship with marketing and design firm Fathom. Anthony (vegan, significant other to a fantastic vegan chef of whose cookbook I am editor, an advocate, a very original, leftofcenter individual and one of my favorite people in the world, ever) and I were talking about the band Mogwai. I Google imaged mogwai and came up with the picture that you now see as my avatar/icon/whatever it is. "Oh my God!" I squealed, "I LOVE them. They're so real and so fake at the same time!"
Highly intelligent statement, Caitlin, congrats.
Do I sound like a valley girl? Sure. But was the dimwitted observation unwittingly appropriate? I think so.
I hate being pigeonholed. In fact, I refuse. I have consciously always been just a bit contentious. I like being somewhat of a contradiction. I am a well-dressed nerd. I am a socially competent dork. I am a confident insecure person. I am 100% overanalytical English Lit major (that one I won't argue). Slothsinabox? Taken at face value, it's not at all me. By presenting such a bizarre internet persona, I suppose I unconsciously challenge people who visit my blog to untangle what that actually means. I am whimsical (in the words of smart and savvy lednik); I like irreverent, bizarre things. At the same time, I'm also cripplingly occupied with unpacking the meaning behind every single action and thought. I am serious and pensive while being lighthearted and entirely unable to carry on a conversation without making a joke of myself. So I guess slothsinabox is indicative of who I am--but only if you dig. Or if you read this entry. (grin).
As class wrapped up tonight Colin said that he didn't know what kinds of implications come with blog anonymity and people allowing themselves to, in a rather self-aggrandizing manner, adopt an exaggerated version of themsleves. I for one hope that permitting these exaggerated blog personas to co-opt at least a small portion of our realtime existence will allow us to have more authentic interactions with one another. If I had a nickel for every time a little more honesty would've fixed an unhappy ending or an unfortunate situation that only occurred out of insecurity or a dogged, half-hearted allegiance to social conventions, I'd be a rich woman without any student loans and a fleet of jet skis. Not to mention two bionic hips.
I sincerely hope that the blogosphere's respect for honesty, forthrightness and tendencies towards the incendiary and blisteringly honest make for more authentic face-to-face human interactions. I'm going to watch for it. I'm going to promote it much as I'm able. We'll see how it goes.
Now, to enjoy a night of college before I'm home for days, working on my thesis. Turkey, mom and dad. I'm happy. I'm excited for my last Thanksgiving return home as a student for a while (hopefully, next year will see me in Spain, teaching English).
Man, I really do love blog class.
*sophisticated and apt expression brought to you by the genius of Trinity's own David Calder.
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
On my only happy long term relationship
Colin said in class something to the effect of people falling basically into one of two categories in regards to information: there are information addicts, and information sharers. He then hinted at a shadier third category where he said he, Scott, and "maybe Caitlin" (me!) fit; according to Colin's characterization, the three of us (or at least he and Scott...andmaybeme!) use information in order to express self. I'm going to step over onto the other side of the line Colin drew and remove the "maybe" from my distinction tp assert that this is a pretty decent estimation of me and my relationship with information.
I've always esteemed knowledge as the most valuable commodity (if I can even fairly call it a commodity. For sake of ease, just let me). For me, the most powerful people are those who possess not money, not fame, not beauty, but information--those that process it well, those that use it--the "smartest." I suppose this opinion took root at a very early age. Consider: the strongest impression I have of my father is an image of him pausing with head cocked, raising his right hand slightly and making a single, controlled conductors motion, asking, "Hey Cato, did you know..." "I learned something really cool today," or "Here's somethin' neat I learned," or "Want to know something kind of cool?" (I usually stay silent and glower at him not because I don't want to know, but because I do, and I'm jealous that he probably knows something I don't. He says "Fine. I won't tell you." and we continue eating, or reading, or whatever, untl he finally tells me. (There you go, Dad--there's the playbook!)). Always a voracious reader, an audiobook fan(atic), a watcher of all "bug-mating-shows" on the Discovery Channel and The History Channel, my dad is ever learning a new tidbit, always wanting to tell it to me or my mother. WhenI was little I think I formed the impression that THIS--THIS curiosity, this knowledge, was what made my dad special. It made him smart. I learned to value that and probably unconsciously decided to create myself in the same image.
The kind of information I collect is specialized. I like random factoids, but what I like more is unraveling strands of information that pertain to my particular interests and then sharing those, sometimes with a purpose--a little like "Hey! Look what I know that pertains to what we're talking about, but is slightly left of center. See if you can figure out what this says about our topic, and about me and the way I process the world (internal monologue addendum "not that you give a shit, but if you do, that'd be cool!"). I like information, and I like to be able to share information that is a reflection of who I am. I suppose the kind of information one chooses to give precedence in his or her education and to which one pays most attention is as much an expression of self and a revelatory act as is the music she chooses, the clothes she wears, the homies with whom she rolls (snicker), and the career she pursues. Yes?
Power, for me, is intelligence, and intelligence means possessing and being capable of using and expressing information. There's probably more I could say, but as I told Spazeboy earlier, for days my thesis has been whipping my ass--not in a fun and games, "I-know-the-safety-word-and-will-honor-it" kind of way, either. For the time being at least I've appeased that cruel mistress and she's retreated for some rest into the recesses of my flash drive. So now, after having handed in damn near 30 pages of what I hope is coherent writing I can use in a final product, I'm going to toddle off for some much, much, much needed sleep. I'm growing jealous of even the city-hardened, malnourished Hartford squirrels' level of bright eyed and bushy tailedness.
I've always esteemed knowledge as the most valuable commodity (if I can even fairly call it a commodity. For sake of ease, just let me). For me, the most powerful people are those who possess not money, not fame, not beauty, but information--those that process it well, those that use it--the "smartest." I suppose this opinion took root at a very early age. Consider: the strongest impression I have of my father is an image of him pausing with head cocked, raising his right hand slightly and making a single, controlled conductors motion, asking, "Hey Cato, did you know..." "I learned something really cool today," or "Here's somethin' neat I learned," or "Want to know something kind of cool?" (I usually stay silent and glower at him not because I don't want to know, but because I do, and I'm jealous that he probably knows something I don't. He says "Fine. I won't tell you." and we continue eating, or reading, or whatever, untl he finally tells me. (There you go, Dad--there's the playbook!)). Always a voracious reader, an audiobook fan(atic), a watcher of all "bug-mating-shows" on the Discovery Channel and The History Channel, my dad is ever learning a new tidbit, always wanting to tell it to me or my mother. WhenI was little I think I formed the impression that THIS--THIS curiosity, this knowledge, was what made my dad special. It made him smart. I learned to value that and probably unconsciously decided to create myself in the same image.
The kind of information I collect is specialized. I like random factoids, but what I like more is unraveling strands of information that pertain to my particular interests and then sharing those, sometimes with a purpose--a little like "Hey! Look what I know that pertains to what we're talking about, but is slightly left of center. See if you can figure out what this says about our topic, and about me and the way I process the world (internal monologue addendum "not that you give a shit, but if you do, that'd be cool!"). I like information, and I like to be able to share information that is a reflection of who I am. I suppose the kind of information one chooses to give precedence in his or her education and to which one pays most attention is as much an expression of self and a revelatory act as is the music she chooses, the clothes she wears, the homies with whom she rolls (snicker), and the career she pursues. Yes?
Power, for me, is intelligence, and intelligence means possessing and being capable of using and expressing information. There's probably more I could say, but as I told Spazeboy earlier, for days my thesis has been whipping my ass--not in a fun and games, "I-know-the-safety-word-and-will-honor-it" kind of way, either. For the time being at least I've appeased that cruel mistress and she's retreated for some rest into the recesses of my flash drive. So now, after having handed in damn near 30 pages of what I hope is coherent writing I can use in a final product, I'm going to toddle off for some much, much, much needed sleep. I'm growing jealous of even the city-hardened, malnourished Hartford squirrels' level of bright eyed and bushy tailedness.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Romancing the Blog
I know that our next exercise for Blogging class was to reflect upon our relationship to information--I'll get to that, I swear, 'cause God knows I love to navel-gaze and I'm very, very excited to address this--but leaving class tonight, Spazeboy's comment about changing his blog's icon to Fabio made me vastly concerned that people had misunderstood my parallel of the blog phenomenon with Romanticism and Sentimentalism. Here: let's set the record straight by acknowledging that a) I was making reference to the Romantic literary movement, not waxing nostalgic about candelight dinners, men with rippling pecs and long hair, and lacy underthings; b)I rather deplore Romanticism and the tendency of its canonical writers to heedlessly careen into self-righteous emotional hedonism; c) I'm a huge proponent of precisely the kind of detached, critically processed and reflective Enlightenment thought Sara was saying she turned to BBC news to obtain. With that said...
What I was trying to articulate in class is that the Blogging movement seems to be doing for communication, writing, and perhaps eventually the literature of our generation something similar to what the European Romantic movement did in the middle of the 18th century. Emphasis that had been traditionally placed upon Englightenment processes (such processes being the value for carefully vetted ideas constructed with a keen eye toward objectivity, attention to societal expectations and norms, and the practice of approaching all literary production, acts of authorship and thought with a critical lens) is now being shifted to the highlight the individual's unique perception, feelings, and experience.
In the Eighteenth century, critical essayists like Johnson, Addison, and Dryden championed a disinterested, detached, intensely objective and philosophical approach toward cultural productions with emphasis upon presenting only the general--the "just representations of general human nature" (see Samuel Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare for more on this). However, with the influence of the French Revolution and the general populace growing weary of this dry, removed manner of experiencing the world, first Sentimentalism, then Romanticism came to the forefront as alternatives to (even replacements for) Enlightenment thought. The traditionally venerated emphasis upon the general and the respect for the critical lens was placed instead upon individual experience and peculiarities of each human man and his feeling. This shift in attitude is evinced even in literary subject--novels like Fielding's Tom Jones and Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling along with myriad sentimental poems swirled around the particular experiences and good feelings of the common man.
Sentimentalism (a predecessor of Romanticism) has its roots in an aspect of Lockean philosophy that maintains a belief in the "natural sociability of humankind and the importance of impulsive, spontaneous sensibility."* This meant that these new literary trends placed all of their trust in the basic goodness and innate desire to do right, be right, and act in a righteous and socially sensitive manner possessed by every individual.
So what does this have to do with blogging?
Well, with the quickly ascending visibility of and import placed upon blogs, a shift in the ways in which we expect our information to come to us is occurring. The authority to be an information sorter is being removed from the hands of the bureaucratic "many" that may find, revise, editorially review and decide upon what is shareable and what is not, and placed instead into the grubby, work-worn paws of the common man. This means that the value placed upon the detached and far-seeing critical lens that we've long hoped and expected our mainstream media would utilize is perhaps in the very early stages of being replaced by trust in the instincts of the individual to differentiate between what information is right, what is good, what is acceptable and worthy of dissemination. With blogs having such a low entry barrier and being so personal in nature, oftentimes without any sort of higher authority or censorship, the individual blogger is given Most Supreme Executive Power.
That the ways in which we vet and present our information may be changing in this manner is at once elating and, quite frankly, terrifying--maybe even dangerous. With so much trust in the basic goodness--even the basic intellect--of the common man, we have to wonder: is the common man basically good and is each man intellectually and morally capable of distinguishing "good" from "bad" information? This brings us to a basic Lockean and Hobbesian debate--is man basically good, or basically bad? Can we trust individual bloggers' ethics without a system of governance that will sound their moral core and decide for us whether or not they've got moral fiber of teflon or of cheese cloth?
Ultimately, it becomes a question of whether, (should this trend develop and manifest itself in the same ways Sentimentalism and Romanticism did--and I know that's a reach, and maybe I'm totally off my rocker--fine), we as untrained individuals really have a grasp of how to read with a critical lens and how to write with a nod toward social responsibility. The prescription for behavior that Locke intended with the above statement attributed to partially birthing the Sentimental movement presumed that individuals, though acting upon their own naturally good feelings and urges, naturally possess a critical enough eye to make choices that are sound for society as well as for themselves. In the case of bloggers, this would mean each blogger maintaining an internal code of ethics that force him to ask before posting something inflammatory or polemical whether the information he is about to share is something he's propagating in good faith with clean motives and whether it might serve society in some manner, or if it is in fact something he may be presenting out of carelessness or self-interest. I'm not sure that we're ready to self govern this way, but I'm excited to see if we can try.
(This quasi-philosophical rant brought to you by Caitlin's thesis).
*Quote taken directly from page 1 of the book Framing Feeling by the brilliant Trinity professor, Barbara Benedict (who is also my idol).
What I was trying to articulate in class is that the Blogging movement seems to be doing for communication, writing, and perhaps eventually the literature of our generation something similar to what the European Romantic movement did in the middle of the 18th century. Emphasis that had been traditionally placed upon Englightenment processes (such processes being the value for carefully vetted ideas constructed with a keen eye toward objectivity, attention to societal expectations and norms, and the practice of approaching all literary production, acts of authorship and thought with a critical lens) is now being shifted to the highlight the individual's unique perception, feelings, and experience.
In the Eighteenth century, critical essayists like Johnson, Addison, and Dryden championed a disinterested, detached, intensely objective and philosophical approach toward cultural productions with emphasis upon presenting only the general--the "just representations of general human nature" (see Samuel Johnson's Preface to Shakespeare for more on this). However, with the influence of the French Revolution and the general populace growing weary of this dry, removed manner of experiencing the world, first Sentimentalism, then Romanticism came to the forefront as alternatives to (even replacements for) Enlightenment thought. The traditionally venerated emphasis upon the general and the respect for the critical lens was placed instead upon individual experience and peculiarities of each human man and his feeling. This shift in attitude is evinced even in literary subject--novels like Fielding's Tom Jones and Mackenzie's The Man of Feeling along with myriad sentimental poems swirled around the particular experiences and good feelings of the common man.
Sentimentalism (a predecessor of Romanticism) has its roots in an aspect of Lockean philosophy that maintains a belief in the "natural sociability of humankind and the importance of impulsive, spontaneous sensibility."* This meant that these new literary trends placed all of their trust in the basic goodness and innate desire to do right, be right, and act in a righteous and socially sensitive manner possessed by every individual.
So what does this have to do with blogging?
Well, with the quickly ascending visibility of and import placed upon blogs, a shift in the ways in which we expect our information to come to us is occurring. The authority to be an information sorter is being removed from the hands of the bureaucratic "many" that may find, revise, editorially review and decide upon what is shareable and what is not, and placed instead into the grubby, work-worn paws of the common man. This means that the value placed upon the detached and far-seeing critical lens that we've long hoped and expected our mainstream media would utilize is perhaps in the very early stages of being replaced by trust in the instincts of the individual to differentiate between what information is right, what is good, what is acceptable and worthy of dissemination. With blogs having such a low entry barrier and being so personal in nature, oftentimes without any sort of higher authority or censorship, the individual blogger is given Most Supreme Executive Power.
That the ways in which we vet and present our information may be changing in this manner is at once elating and, quite frankly, terrifying--maybe even dangerous. With so much trust in the basic goodness--even the basic intellect--of the common man, we have to wonder: is the common man basically good and is each man intellectually and morally capable of distinguishing "good" from "bad" information? This brings us to a basic Lockean and Hobbesian debate--is man basically good, or basically bad? Can we trust individual bloggers' ethics without a system of governance that will sound their moral core and decide for us whether or not they've got moral fiber of teflon or of cheese cloth?
Ultimately, it becomes a question of whether, (should this trend develop and manifest itself in the same ways Sentimentalism and Romanticism did--and I know that's a reach, and maybe I'm totally off my rocker--fine), we as untrained individuals really have a grasp of how to read with a critical lens and how to write with a nod toward social responsibility. The prescription for behavior that Locke intended with the above statement attributed to partially birthing the Sentimental movement presumed that individuals, though acting upon their own naturally good feelings and urges, naturally possess a critical enough eye to make choices that are sound for society as well as for themselves. In the case of bloggers, this would mean each blogger maintaining an internal code of ethics that force him to ask before posting something inflammatory or polemical whether the information he is about to share is something he's propagating in good faith with clean motives and whether it might serve society in some manner, or if it is in fact something he may be presenting out of carelessness or self-interest. I'm not sure that we're ready to self govern this way, but I'm excited to see if we can try.
(This quasi-philosophical rant brought to you by Caitlin's thesis).
*Quote taken directly from page 1 of the book Framing Feeling by the brilliant Trinity professor, Barbara Benedict (who is also my idol).
Monday, November 06, 2006
The headless body still functions!
Class tonight, sans Colin, worked out really nicely I think. I was nervous someone would seize leadership and monopolize the conversation, but to my relief we all spoke in turn and attentively listened to one another. There was a real sense of an even exchange of ideas and genuine, attentive interaction. There were, of course, a few individuals who spoke oftener than others (and I thank them for providing the discussion's shape), but for the most part, the class was relatively vocal and focused. Toward the end of claa side conversations began to sprout, but a core class discussion remained regardless.
We chatted about ethics and whether or not there should be a "cred stamp" of sorts that bloggers--personal and otherwise--may attain by observing a certain degree of dedication to truthfulness, objectivity, transparency and the like. I think that for political blogs, scientific blogs, and blogs discussing scholarly information, this would be useful in order to distinguish "good" information from "bad" information. For personal bloggers, though, what do we care about their cred? Visitors to personal blogs would probably be equally okay with knowing they're popping in for fiction as much as they are for fact. Then again, this also means that bloggers are under no obligation whatsoever to even try to represent reality or truthiness (what is reality and truthiness if reality is perception, anyway?), which is the current case. Personal moral and ethical standards rule the day. Some of us are devoid of them. Some of us make bad choices. Some people get hurt--end of story. Honestly, I don't think personal blogs should be regulated.
At some point Kristen brought up the Rosen article. We then discussed how sometimes people don't even know they're being blogged about (in the case of Debbie's swains), and I believe Brenda brought up the point that failing to divulge one's own identity but readily supplying that of others is a big no-no in ethical blogging. I got to thinking at this point about Coffee. Being someone who has read her ENTIRE blog, I've noticed that she is, in fact, the paragon of blogging ethics. She never reveals the true identities (save that of her best friend Kat) of the people in her blog--not even the despicable men she reviles. I think that's actually pretty impressive. Coffee maintains her credibility and her blog ethics by not identifying herself or those who fall into the coding of her blogs by name. That's no mean feat.
As we chatted in class today I listened carefully to the kinds of comments the people in our classroom were making and it struck me, finally, that we are all so very bloggy. We're the kind of people who enjoy the subversive, the divisive, enjoy satire and parody and biting sarcasm. We berate ourselves and everyone around us--we are, in many ways, social critics. Kind of cool. We are, I think, readily identifiable as a blogging community, even away from the cyberrealm.
Peace out for now. The thesis beckons. And by beckons I mean screeches.
We chatted about ethics and whether or not there should be a "cred stamp" of sorts that bloggers--personal and otherwise--may attain by observing a certain degree of dedication to truthfulness, objectivity, transparency and the like. I think that for political blogs, scientific blogs, and blogs discussing scholarly information, this would be useful in order to distinguish "good" information from "bad" information. For personal bloggers, though, what do we care about their cred? Visitors to personal blogs would probably be equally okay with knowing they're popping in for fiction as much as they are for fact. Then again, this also means that bloggers are under no obligation whatsoever to even try to represent reality or truthiness (what is reality and truthiness if reality is perception, anyway?), which is the current case. Personal moral and ethical standards rule the day. Some of us are devoid of them. Some of us make bad choices. Some people get hurt--end of story. Honestly, I don't think personal blogs should be regulated.
At some point Kristen brought up the Rosen article. We then discussed how sometimes people don't even know they're being blogged about (in the case of Debbie's swains), and I believe Brenda brought up the point that failing to divulge one's own identity but readily supplying that of others is a big no-no in ethical blogging. I got to thinking at this point about Coffee. Being someone who has read her ENTIRE blog, I've noticed that she is, in fact, the paragon of blogging ethics. She never reveals the true identities (save that of her best friend Kat) of the people in her blog--not even the despicable men she reviles. I think that's actually pretty impressive. Coffee maintains her credibility and her blog ethics by not identifying herself or those who fall into the coding of her blogs by name. That's no mean feat.
As we chatted in class today I listened carefully to the kinds of comments the people in our classroom were making and it struck me, finally, that we are all so very bloggy. We're the kind of people who enjoy the subversive, the divisive, enjoy satire and parody and biting sarcasm. We berate ourselves and everyone around us--we are, in many ways, social critics. Kind of cool. We are, I think, readily identifiable as a blogging community, even away from the cyberrealm.
Peace out for now. The thesis beckons. And by beckons I mean screeches.
Because this is obviously important.
| What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio. | |
| The Inland North | |
| The Northeast | |
| The South | |
| Philadelphia | |
| The West | |
| Boston | |
| North Central | |
| What'>http://www.gotoquiz.com/what_american_accent_do_you_have">What American accent do you have? Take'>http://www.gotoquiz.com/">Take More Quizzes | |
Um... Thank God I have a good voice for Tv?
Sunday, November 05, 2006
This started as coherent, I promise. Just didn't end up that way.
Blogherald: a blog about blogs? Why, yes, thank you! I found the site a pretty interesting and useful read. It offers a nice, neat overview of how blogs are being used, who's making use of them, and what kind of impact they're having WITH context and specific stories. I enjoyed the snippet about the blogging nun. Also, remember me spouting about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in the first or second class? No? Okay, I'm not surprised, but you can learn more here about how to avoid doing it the wrong way (which'll give you an idea of how to do it the right way). Cool, right? Thanks Blogherald--you promoted my quasi-legitimacy by furnishing a helpful link.
The majority of the sites I've cruised that offer literature on blogging "ethics" prescribe conversation as being the cornerstone of a healthy individual blog or blog community. Blogs do, indeed, have to be conversations--but bloggers don't always know this at first. I suspect that often blogs start off apostrophic in nature (I, for instance, began my LiveJournal in the Spring of 2005 with a particular audience of one in mind. That audience then just happened to expand without my ever intending it to) or the blogger has no real hope of gaining a following (take the elderly female technophile's blog--you know, the one with the robodog?) ...but then something miraculous occurs: comments flow in. All of a sudden, the thing that always should've been a conversation but never necessarily was becomes one. Sometimes an uncomfortable one. From the moment that commenting begins, the blogger is powerfully reminded that he is no longer alone in his own personal cyber realm--he's forced to react to and interact with myriad other bloggers in his blogosphere. This means that he's got to censor himself more. This mean's he's got to be accountable. This is when tension arises as we've seen with Jason Scott and Coffee.
Those of us who posted acerbic comments about Jason nervously awaited his arrival in class, wondering if he were planning upon bringing a loaded magnum and a set of brass knuckles as dates. As Jim has pointed out, it's easy to forget--even WITH the immediacy of comments and having established that we do, in fact, have an audience and a responsibility to have a fair, transparent conversation--that there are other HUMANS in the mix here. One of our TrinBlogWarriors deleted her post after she came to this realization herself but, alas, due to Jason's wily cybertricks, it'll be preserved forever on however many mirror sits. With Coffee, too, we got into trouble. Or...erm...mainly I did. I whipped off a snap judgment as I'm wont to do--only I didn't make this snap judgment in the ear of a confidant or in my own head. It was in writing. It was part of the conversation. And Coffee talked back.
As far as protection goes, I don't think bloggers (or persons involved with bloggers) can expect it. As personal bloggers we're all more or less blogging in a manner dictated by our personal moral and ethical codes. The topics that get spewed out there into the vast blog conversation are dictated by our own preferences and whims. We can keep ourselves safe in our own blogs, free of personal detractions, but that doesn't mean our friend who also blogs will have any compunction about outing us. According to his moral and ethical blog code, making mention of something that might embarrass us is perfectly acceptable for sharing. This struggle ultimately boils down to the fact that perception, to a great degree, is reality and varies so greatly from person to person. What's acceptable blog-fodder for one blogger may not be for another. So, perception coloring this decision so vastly, regulation is impossible. To bring it into the real, this exact issue (personal versus private, and who has the right to share how much) cracked the final support column of the relationship of two of my close friends whom we'll call Ellen and Max.
Ellen is an incredibly private person. If you tell this girl a secret, it's more secure with her than it would be written in invisible ink in mirror script Kufi, then locked up in a Swiss bank's safe and guarded by a team of man-eating rock trolls. She's equally witholding with her own secrets so it's very, very hard to really know her. Max, on the other hand, is the man to whom I often refer as no-holds-barred-Max. Max will tell you anything and everything about his emotions, his thoughts, his needs, his problems, his personal life and the personal life of anybody else he knows. Dating Ellen, naturally, was a problem, because in being together they created a collective personal life. Max, used to sharing his own, was very much willing to discuss this collective personal life whilst Ellen...well...wasn't. Max argued, "Hey! It's my life. I decide which parts to omit and which to share." Ellen countered with, "It isn't just your life, Max. It's mine, too." Max protested, "It's ours, Ellen. Not yours." Ellen's final rebuttal was, "Well if it's ours then that means at least a portion of it is owned by me, and I prefer you not discuss our relationships with all of your friends." Max couldn't understand these restrictions on his expression. Ellen couldn't understand why, to him, the right to share as he pleases is sacred to him. Naturally, she dumped him.
Max never shared or discussed anything he did in a mean-spirited manner--his definitions of what was acceptable to share and who had ownership just differed vastly from those of Ellen. This little example is exactly the same as what happened with the Bloggers of the NYT Rosen article. Debbie, for example, believes it to be her Internet-given right to identify her bad dates while they'd prefer some anonymity. If a person truly believes he or she has every right to share what he sees fit, regardless of the desires of others, then isn't regulation impossible? Unfortunately, I kind of suspect it is, and I'm not sure whether this is a good or a bad thing, or whether it isn't that easily definable at all.
The majority of the sites I've cruised that offer literature on blogging "ethics" prescribe conversation as being the cornerstone of a healthy individual blog or blog community. Blogs do, indeed, have to be conversations--but bloggers don't always know this at first. I suspect that often blogs start off apostrophic in nature (I, for instance, began my LiveJournal in the Spring of 2005 with a particular audience of one in mind. That audience then just happened to expand without my ever intending it to) or the blogger has no real hope of gaining a following (take the elderly female technophile's blog--you know, the one with the robodog?) ...but then something miraculous occurs: comments flow in. All of a sudden, the thing that always should've been a conversation but never necessarily was becomes one. Sometimes an uncomfortable one. From the moment that commenting begins, the blogger is powerfully reminded that he is no longer alone in his own personal cyber realm--he's forced to react to and interact with myriad other bloggers in his blogosphere. This means that he's got to censor himself more. This mean's he's got to be accountable. This is when tension arises as we've seen with Jason Scott and Coffee.
Those of us who posted acerbic comments about Jason nervously awaited his arrival in class, wondering if he were planning upon bringing a loaded magnum and a set of brass knuckles as dates. As Jim has pointed out, it's easy to forget--even WITH the immediacy of comments and having established that we do, in fact, have an audience and a responsibility to have a fair, transparent conversation--that there are other HUMANS in the mix here. One of our TrinBlogWarriors deleted her post after she came to this realization herself but, alas, due to Jason's wily cybertricks, it'll be preserved forever on however many mirror sits. With Coffee, too, we got into trouble. Or...erm...mainly I did. I whipped off a snap judgment as I'm wont to do--only I didn't make this snap judgment in the ear of a confidant or in my own head. It was in writing. It was part of the conversation. And Coffee talked back.
As far as protection goes, I don't think bloggers (or persons involved with bloggers) can expect it. As personal bloggers we're all more or less blogging in a manner dictated by our personal moral and ethical codes. The topics that get spewed out there into the vast blog conversation are dictated by our own preferences and whims. We can keep ourselves safe in our own blogs, free of personal detractions, but that doesn't mean our friend who also blogs will have any compunction about outing us. According to his moral and ethical blog code, making mention of something that might embarrass us is perfectly acceptable for sharing. This struggle ultimately boils down to the fact that perception, to a great degree, is reality and varies so greatly from person to person. What's acceptable blog-fodder for one blogger may not be for another. So, perception coloring this decision so vastly, regulation is impossible. To bring it into the real, this exact issue (personal versus private, and who has the right to share how much) cracked the final support column of the relationship of two of my close friends whom we'll call Ellen and Max.
Ellen is an incredibly private person. If you tell this girl a secret, it's more secure with her than it would be written in invisible ink in mirror script Kufi, then locked up in a Swiss bank's safe and guarded by a team of man-eating rock trolls. She's equally witholding with her own secrets so it's very, very hard to really know her. Max, on the other hand, is the man to whom I often refer as no-holds-barred-Max. Max will tell you anything and everything about his emotions, his thoughts, his needs, his problems, his personal life and the personal life of anybody else he knows. Dating Ellen, naturally, was a problem, because in being together they created a collective personal life. Max, used to sharing his own, was very much willing to discuss this collective personal life whilst Ellen...well...wasn't. Max argued, "Hey! It's my life. I decide which parts to omit and which to share." Ellen countered with, "It isn't just your life, Max. It's mine, too." Max protested, "It's ours, Ellen. Not yours." Ellen's final rebuttal was, "Well if it's ours then that means at least a portion of it is owned by me, and I prefer you not discuss our relationships with all of your friends." Max couldn't understand these restrictions on his expression. Ellen couldn't understand why, to him, the right to share as he pleases is sacred to him. Naturally, she dumped him.
Max never shared or discussed anything he did in a mean-spirited manner--his definitions of what was acceptable to share and who had ownership just differed vastly from those of Ellen. This little example is exactly the same as what happened with the Bloggers of the NYT Rosen article. Debbie, for example, believes it to be her Internet-given right to identify her bad dates while they'd prefer some anonymity. If a person truly believes he or she has every right to share what he sees fit, regardless of the desires of others, then isn't regulation impossible? Unfortunately, I kind of suspect it is, and I'm not sure whether this is a good or a bad thing, or whether it isn't that easily definable at all.
Thursday, November 02, 2006
Ageist Criticism
Two weeks ago I sat at the Bistro with my professor's four year old daughter. Julia contemplatively munched her Sunchips and I gulped grape-flavored water with sweetners that will probably kill me while answering questions such as, "Why are those girls brown and those girls aren't?" and "Does Cinderella live in that castle?", Julia's tiny finger inclined toward the Chapel. Until very recently, children amused me about as much as amusement parks (verdict: highly unamusing), but now, as I creep precariously nearer to the child-bearing age, I find that not only do I like them, but they fascinate me.
But this story isn't about my newfound appreciation for little kids. It's about prejudicial old men.
Initially I thought he was flirting with me. From the next table over a seemingly harmless older man clad in a hat and tan jacked asked me my name, if Julia was mine (to which I replied a vehement NO!), identified himself as a retiree, a returning grad-student, a grandfather of two boys. To his inquiries I replied that I was a senior, an English Lit major, involved with activity x, y and z at Trinity.
He seemed all right, if a little tiresome due to a pronounced tendency toward attention seeking, but my Spidey-Senses (finely attuned to outing creepy older men) soon began to niggle at me, urging me to cease conversation with Mr. Retired Grad Student. As politely as I could, I shortened my answers, turned by body away from him and attended fully to Julia, discussing the far more interesting topics of flowers and French fries. As is a habit with men, after I rejected him, he moved on to a younger woman. A much younger woman.
Mr. Retired Grad Student tried to engage Julia, asking her her age, what her mommy taught, how she liked school. I gently directed Julia's gaze back to me and hoped she'd eat her chips faster. Fortunately, Julia soon grew distracted by some birds outside, and I prayed this would bring our interaction wtih Mr. Retired Grad Student to a close. Instead, because I think the Gods of social interaction loathe and despise me, his rusty train of semi-creepy palaver jumped its tracks and began to barrel back in my direction.
"Usually lots of people come sit with me before class. I don't know where they all are today," he began.
Really? I thought. Shocking. I smiled, offered a clipped, "I'm sure they'll be here soon."
"I'm taking a graduate course on James Joyce," he confided proudly.
"Oh?" I asked, actually truly interested for the first time. "With Rosen? I wanted so badly to take that, but with a senior thesis and other activities I don't think I would've had time."
"Well I hate having undergraduates in my classes," he told me matter-o-factly. "They do everything slapdash and the quality of their work is embarrassing. They obviously put very little effort into it because none of them care, you know?"
"Excuse me?" I asked, hoping I'd somehow mistaken or misheard that ugly, blatant shitslinging.
"They're useless, undergraduates. They have no place in graduate courses, even if the professor lets them in."
"I'm an undergraduate," I said, my face reddening with disbelief and good old fashioned pissiness. "Have some respect."
I should added more to that. I should have fought then. I'd have said that undergraduates are not retirees who, at age 65, are going back to school for fun; we may not have professional lives and families to attend as do many, many graduate students, but we have four other classes and a potpourri of extracurriculars to which we devote our time. Completing assignments, reading, spending the kind of time an individual without a job and with one other class (like Mr. Retired Graduate Student) may be able to devote is an impossibility for us. This does not, however, I repeat does not mean that we don't care.
I was deciding how much of this I wanted to lay on my new nemesis when Julia conveniently announced she wanted to go play tea party. She rolled up the top of her bag of chips, stood up and pulled me with her. I didn't bother to offer the man a goodbye and I was thankful my teacup that afternoon was imaginary: my fists were in good form to shatter some heirloom china.
For the rest of the week I stewed. Three days ago I saw him again.
He was shuffling through the PRs in the library where I'd been running my fingers over gilded spines for nearly a half an hour, hunter-gathering thesis sources. He looked me over cursorily and we made brief eye contact. No recognition. As he glanced about the shelves around him, definitely overwhelmed, I smiled internally. I do believe, I thought slyly, it is playtime.
"Need some help?" I asked, approaching him cheerily as he squinted through glasses slipping down his nose.
"Why, yes. I'm looking for PS...PS.547."
"Well, these are the PRs," I told him. "Here. Come with me. I'll show you." I led him to the PS section, commenting on the weather and the nearness of Thanksgiving. Upon arrival I inquired of him what book he sought. He proffered a sheet on which a call number was scrawled and as he bumbled about, perusing the wrong shelf in vain hopes of finding his book, I employed my mad library skillz to slickly locate it and deposit it in his hands.
"There you go, sir," I said with that special, private smile for insipid assholes I've perfected, working retail since the age of 16.
"Ah. Good," he said, thumbing through the book and briefly checking the title to make certain I'd indeed presented him with the correct volume. He looked up at me again. "You know. I'm a grad student here." Clearly, he was pleased with himself.
I returned his proud stare with an accompanying broad grin. "I know," I told him, "and you hate undergraduates in your classes."
We stared at one another for a long moment, he in wonderment, I in satisfaction. I tilted my head affectedly to one side, scrunched my nose, eyes and mouth into the sort of smile I'd give to a particularly winsome little lapdog, and began to step merrily off down the aisle.
"That...that's interesting..." he called as I reached the end of the stack. Still grinning, I turned to look at him over my shoulder.
"It was," I said as though congratulating him, "until it got incredibly insulting." I folded my arms, assuming a look and tone of mock confusion. "And as a graduate student of English," I added, pausing dramatically. "I'd think you'd have learned that the most important lesson is to know your audience."'
I winked, waved goodbye, pivoted on my heel and left him there slackjawed, smiling all the way back to my room. Sometimes I'm slightly badass.
But this story isn't about my newfound appreciation for little kids. It's about prejudicial old men.
Initially I thought he was flirting with me. From the next table over a seemingly harmless older man clad in a hat and tan jacked asked me my name, if Julia was mine (to which I replied a vehement NO!), identified himself as a retiree, a returning grad-student, a grandfather of two boys. To his inquiries I replied that I was a senior, an English Lit major, involved with activity x, y and z at Trinity.
He seemed all right, if a little tiresome due to a pronounced tendency toward attention seeking, but my Spidey-Senses (finely attuned to outing creepy older men) soon began to niggle at me, urging me to cease conversation with Mr. Retired Grad Student. As politely as I could, I shortened my answers, turned by body away from him and attended fully to Julia, discussing the far more interesting topics of flowers and French fries. As is a habit with men, after I rejected him, he moved on to a younger woman. A much younger woman.
Mr. Retired Grad Student tried to engage Julia, asking her her age, what her mommy taught, how she liked school. I gently directed Julia's gaze back to me and hoped she'd eat her chips faster. Fortunately, Julia soon grew distracted by some birds outside, and I prayed this would bring our interaction wtih Mr. Retired Grad Student to a close. Instead, because I think the Gods of social interaction loathe and despise me, his rusty train of semi-creepy palaver jumped its tracks and began to barrel back in my direction.
"Usually lots of people come sit with me before class. I don't know where they all are today," he began.
Really? I thought. Shocking. I smiled, offered a clipped, "I'm sure they'll be here soon."
"I'm taking a graduate course on James Joyce," he confided proudly.
"Oh?" I asked, actually truly interested for the first time. "With Rosen? I wanted so badly to take that, but with a senior thesis and other activities I don't think I would've had time."
"Well I hate having undergraduates in my classes," he told me matter-o-factly. "They do everything slapdash and the quality of their work is embarrassing. They obviously put very little effort into it because none of them care, you know?"
"Excuse me?" I asked, hoping I'd somehow mistaken or misheard that ugly, blatant shitslinging.
"They're useless, undergraduates. They have no place in graduate courses, even if the professor lets them in."
"I'm an undergraduate," I said, my face reddening with disbelief and good old fashioned pissiness. "Have some respect."
I should added more to that. I should have fought then. I'd have said that undergraduates are not retirees who, at age 65, are going back to school for fun; we may not have professional lives and families to attend as do many, many graduate students, but we have four other classes and a potpourri of extracurriculars to which we devote our time. Completing assignments, reading, spending the kind of time an individual without a job and with one other class (like Mr. Retired Graduate Student) may be able to devote is an impossibility for us. This does not, however, I repeat does not mean that we don't care.
I was deciding how much of this I wanted to lay on my new nemesis when Julia conveniently announced she wanted to go play tea party. She rolled up the top of her bag of chips, stood up and pulled me with her. I didn't bother to offer the man a goodbye and I was thankful my teacup that afternoon was imaginary: my fists were in good form to shatter some heirloom china.
For the rest of the week I stewed. Three days ago I saw him again.
He was shuffling through the PRs in the library where I'd been running my fingers over gilded spines for nearly a half an hour, hunter-gathering thesis sources. He looked me over cursorily and we made brief eye contact. No recognition. As he glanced about the shelves around him, definitely overwhelmed, I smiled internally. I do believe, I thought slyly, it is playtime.
"Need some help?" I asked, approaching him cheerily as he squinted through glasses slipping down his nose.
"Why, yes. I'm looking for PS...PS.547."
"Well, these are the PRs," I told him. "Here. Come with me. I'll show you." I led him to the PS section, commenting on the weather and the nearness of Thanksgiving. Upon arrival I inquired of him what book he sought. He proffered a sheet on which a call number was scrawled and as he bumbled about, perusing the wrong shelf in vain hopes of finding his book, I employed my mad library skillz to slickly locate it and deposit it in his hands.
"There you go, sir," I said with that special, private smile for insipid assholes I've perfected, working retail since the age of 16.
"Ah. Good," he said, thumbing through the book and briefly checking the title to make certain I'd indeed presented him with the correct volume. He looked up at me again. "You know. I'm a grad student here." Clearly, he was pleased with himself.
I returned his proud stare with an accompanying broad grin. "I know," I told him, "and you hate undergraduates in your classes."
We stared at one another for a long moment, he in wonderment, I in satisfaction. I tilted my head affectedly to one side, scrunched my nose, eyes and mouth into the sort of smile I'd give to a particularly winsome little lapdog, and began to step merrily off down the aisle.
"That...that's interesting..." he called as I reached the end of the stack. Still grinning, I turned to look at him over my shoulder.
"It was," I said as though congratulating him, "until it got incredibly insulting." I folded my arms, assuming a look and tone of mock confusion. "And as a graduate student of English," I added, pausing dramatically. "I'd think you'd have learned that the most important lesson is to know your audience."'
I winked, waved goodbye, pivoted on my heel and left him there slackjawed, smiling all the way back to my room. Sometimes I'm slightly badass.
Friday, October 27, 2006
MeFi/.
I've just been lost in metafilter for about two hours.
Among the things I read were this and this. There was more, but that was about 40 clicks ago. This is what tipped me off to the fact that I am definitely no longer in Kansas. And it kind of terrifies me.
Metafilter is pretty accessible to all and allows anybody to sashay on in and add a link or a comment. I like the site's articulated goal: "This website exists to break down the barriers between people, to extend a weblog beyond just one person, and to foster discussion among its members." Sounds a little less kumbaya than Wikipedia's "We're going to create a space for THE SUM OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE!" (grin). Metafilter makes you rack up a little street cred before you get to post on a main page and be a lofty contributor. You've got a waiting period of at least a week (oh God! A whole WEEK!? A veritable cyber LIFETIME!), plus postings, before becoming eligible for this honor.
What makes a good post for the community? Well, MeFi says this: "most people haven't seen it before, there is something interesting about the content on the page, and it might warrant discussion from others." I can dig it. I also enjoy that MetaFilter doesn't encourage shameless self promotion. It gently suggests instead "Self promotion can be "earned." If you consistently post thought-provoking comments or links on the site, people will click on your name to know you better. On the profile page, you can put your own URL and people can check that out. " So then being cool and thoughtful gets you brownie points? This is my kind of place...or a place in which I wouldn't do very well. Either/or.
Slashdot is also kind of interesting but seems like a space for people vastly more technologically inclined than I. The articles were interesting to me, but ultimately not quirky and weird enough to keep me reading for hours (evil, EVIL MetaFilter! I should be working on my thesis!), the same way MeFi did. Quite frankly, I'm not sure about what a lot of slashdot is talking about because I don't have the appropriate body of knowledge, but for people who can grasp this stuff (or if I simply read a little more) I'm sure it's cool stuff.
And now I should continue listening to Jeff Buckley, drinking Earl Grey and avoiding my thesis like bubonic baboons. Or something sort of like that.
Among the things I read were this and this. There was more, but that was about 40 clicks ago. This is what tipped me off to the fact that I am definitely no longer in Kansas. And it kind of terrifies me.
Metafilter is pretty accessible to all and allows anybody to sashay on in and add a link or a comment. I like the site's articulated goal: "This website exists to break down the barriers between people, to extend a weblog beyond just one person, and to foster discussion among its members." Sounds a little less kumbaya than Wikipedia's "We're going to create a space for THE SUM OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE!" (grin). Metafilter makes you rack up a little street cred before you get to post on a main page and be a lofty contributor. You've got a waiting period of at least a week (oh God! A whole WEEK!? A veritable cyber LIFETIME!), plus postings, before becoming eligible for this honor.
What makes a good post for the community? Well, MeFi says this: "most people haven't seen it before, there is something interesting about the content on the page, and it might warrant discussion from others." I can dig it. I also enjoy that MetaFilter doesn't encourage shameless self promotion. It gently suggests instead "Self promotion can be "earned." If you consistently post thought-provoking comments or links on the site, people will click on your name to know you better. On the profile page, you can put your own URL and people can check that out. " So then being cool and thoughtful gets you brownie points? This is my kind of place...or a place in which I wouldn't do very well. Either/or.
Slashdot is also kind of interesting but seems like a space for people vastly more technologically inclined than I. The articles were interesting to me, but ultimately not quirky and weird enough to keep me reading for hours (evil, EVIL MetaFilter! I should be working on my thesis!), the same way MeFi did. Quite frankly, I'm not sure about what a lot of slashdot is talking about because I don't have the appropriate body of knowledge, but for people who can grasp this stuff (or if I simply read a little more) I'm sure it's cool stuff.
And now I should continue listening to Jeff Buckley, drinking Earl Grey and avoiding my thesis like bubonic baboons. Or something sort of like that.
Blogging: Stripping us of Humanity, or highlighting our basic scraftiness?
Before I get on to metafilter and the like, I was interested in something Jim said in his comment on this post. I apologize in advance for quoting such a (well written!) hearty chunk, but I'd like to respond to all of it, thus I think it appropriate to include it all.
"The distance and analytical nature of the blog changed my voice, making it more metallic and harsh as I examined someone who I’d met for two hours and then passed judgment on him as if he were another blog. He is human and I forgot and in doing so became a little less human myself. That I think is the great flaw of blogs and technology – we have trouble communicating our humanity. There is no inflection of voice, a smile, a raised eyebrow to redirect, clarify or soften sarcasm, to add humor where it was meant to be. The words simply sit on the screen, not controlled by the writer, but interpreted by the reader. Even if we don’t assume new identities, as in Wikipedia or Second Life, we are new, different because of the flat nature of the medium. Perhaps, that is why there are all these odd fights, flaming on blogs and Wikipedia – the nuance of humanity is not there."
So the blog gives us distance and yes, by nature is analytical (or, in the words of my father, who now reads this blog as well as most of yours ((*Hi, Dad!*)) "seems like a whole lotta navel gazing to me, Cato.") but does it make us LESS human, or rather frighteningly moreso? Perhaps this'll mean me outing myself as something of a cynic, but I think that deep down inside, past the layers of kindness and rational justice, we're all just a little bit assholic--the blog just happens to lend itself so nicely to showcasing this basic human snarkitude. Also, aren't we always passing judgment on the people we meet, though it may be on some unnoticed, unconscious level? As a culture we've become so preoccupied with political correctness that it's hardly appropriate to breathe too heavily in someone's general direction, much less tell them what we think of them. I think that out of instinct and desire to be a) polite b) liked and c) cover our asses, we're far more apt to smile pretty and call people nitwits in our heads than we are to simply behave indifferently or express actual antipathy. So I don't know, Jim, if the blog makes us crueler by removing a level of humanity or if it makes us more honest by ripping off the bullshit colored mantle of proper social protocol. For the record, I hope it's the former, but I can't help but play devil's advocate and entertain the possibility of the latter.
Also, I'd like to think that with carefully chosen words and clearly communicated ideas, blog intent can't be missed by too huge a margin. Text DOES communicate that which the author wishes--it's really a matter of careful diction and thorough cogitation before one gets to the point at which he hits "publish," and the words are up there forever. With that said... I think it's unlikely that bloggers often ARRIVE at that "thoroughly cogitated" point before hitting "publish" (I know I often don't). Therefore, intent is frequently slightly off-center and people, being slightly assholic at the core, love to be offended, so will naturally vault up onto their soapboxes and start a fight at really any given little time.
P.S. Shout out to Aldon: "snark" is an amazing word. You severely improved the quality of my afternoon by using it. :) (Go ahead and TRY to misinterpret that smiley face. See? You CAN'T). ;)
"The distance and analytical nature of the blog changed my voice, making it more metallic and harsh as I examined someone who I’d met for two hours and then passed judgment on him as if he were another blog. He is human and I forgot and in doing so became a little less human myself. That I think is the great flaw of blogs and technology – we have trouble communicating our humanity. There is no inflection of voice, a smile, a raised eyebrow to redirect, clarify or soften sarcasm, to add humor where it was meant to be. The words simply sit on the screen, not controlled by the writer, but interpreted by the reader. Even if we don’t assume new identities, as in Wikipedia or Second Life, we are new, different because of the flat nature of the medium. Perhaps, that is why there are all these odd fights, flaming on blogs and Wikipedia – the nuance of humanity is not there."
So the blog gives us distance and yes, by nature is analytical (or, in the words of my father, who now reads this blog as well as most of yours ((*Hi, Dad!*)) "seems like a whole lotta navel gazing to me, Cato.") but does it make us LESS human, or rather frighteningly moreso? Perhaps this'll mean me outing myself as something of a cynic, but I think that deep down inside, past the layers of kindness and rational justice, we're all just a little bit assholic--the blog just happens to lend itself so nicely to showcasing this basic human snarkitude. Also, aren't we always passing judgment on the people we meet, though it may be on some unnoticed, unconscious level? As a culture we've become so preoccupied with political correctness that it's hardly appropriate to breathe too heavily in someone's general direction, much less tell them what we think of them. I think that out of instinct and desire to be a) polite b) liked and c) cover our asses, we're far more apt to smile pretty and call people nitwits in our heads than we are to simply behave indifferently or express actual antipathy. So I don't know, Jim, if the blog makes us crueler by removing a level of humanity or if it makes us more honest by ripping off the bullshit colored mantle of proper social protocol. For the record, I hope it's the former, but I can't help but play devil's advocate and entertain the possibility of the latter.
Also, I'd like to think that with carefully chosen words and clearly communicated ideas, blog intent can't be missed by too huge a margin. Text DOES communicate that which the author wishes--it's really a matter of careful diction and thorough cogitation before one gets to the point at which he hits "publish," and the words are up there forever. With that said... I think it's unlikely that bloggers often ARRIVE at that "thoroughly cogitated" point before hitting "publish" (I know I often don't). Therefore, intent is frequently slightly off-center and people, being slightly assholic at the core, love to be offended, so will naturally vault up onto their soapboxes and start a fight at really any given little time.
P.S. Shout out to Aldon: "snark" is an amazing word. You severely improved the quality of my afternoon by using it. :) (Go ahead and TRY to misinterpret that smiley face. See? You CAN'T). ;)
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
An afternoon Wiki-Chuckle
Behold: the dangers of unlimited, often unchecked Wikipedia editing. Scope out a perfect example of the kind of stuff Jason mentioned last night that can be screwed with by pretty much anyone and go for weeks or months without being corrected.
Somehow, I suspect this isn't an unbiased estimation of what Romantic poetry is, though I admit I think I've said pretty similarly damning things about the genre. However, I'd never, ever use "gay" to describe it. "Flamboyant" and sensational like a nice pair of pink leopard print leather pants, yes.
Somehow, I suspect this isn't an unbiased estimation of what Romantic poetry is, though I admit I think I've said pretty similarly damning things about the genre. However, I'd never, ever use "gay" to describe it. "Flamboyant" and sensational like a nice pair of pink leopard print leather pants, yes.
Monday, October 23, 2006
So I guess I'm going to go ahead and piss people off again...
You know how some people seem to take on entirely different persona(e) when they write versus when they speak? Familiar with the way others' prose personalities translate directly to their spoken words? I myself am probably a case of the former, save in situations in which I'm very comfortable or well established. While I may come off textually as very confident, assured, smarmy, and sometimes even righteous, I confess that I'm a rather nervous public speaker. I'll get blushy and look down and forget what I'm going to say, dig my toes into carpet and wonder how many people are staring at that huge zit crater southeast of my left nostril. Our friend Jason, though? Man, is he a case of the latter.
Being a writing tutor I'm especially adept at wading through bullshit to dig from the muck swallowed diamond rings, toy soldiers and gold bullion, so before tonight's appearance and with my readings of Jason's Wikipedia criticism as background, I'd decided that Jason had begun to make some good points in his articles and the speech, their only true fault being lack of cohesion. His written/transcribed material, while entertaining, proved continually troubling for me because by the end of whatever piece I'd been cruising, I still wasn't very clear as to Jason's actual stance save a general sentiment of negativity toward Wikipedia. Jason's more than willing to step in and make attacks--(hello Wiki-vandalism!)--but doesn't seem to have much in the way of productive solutions. Nor do I get the sense that he's clearly thought out and identified in explicable terms the core of what he sees as being wrong with Wikipedia's system.
Exactly as he does in his articles, tonight he talked around suggestions of points, providing lots of interesting factual information regurgitated into our class' collective hungry gullet and I'm full, but not satisfied. If in fact he can, I'd like to see Jason dredge up from his miasma of swirling ideas what he sees as the core faults of Wikipedia, whip them into the shape of ugly hobgoblins he can plainly expose for the entire world to see beyond a doubt, and proceed to rip them to shreds as, with his presumed body of knowledge, he should be able to do with his eyes closed. What I wonder--and what I wondered after I'd done my reading of his stuff for the last real post--is if Jason knows what these flaws are, or if he's just one of those individuals who's dangerously fond of being contentious, devilishly grinning over steepled fingers, giggling "I know more than you know!" Or maybe he's just jealous of Jimbo? The resentment seemed rather personal. After all, Jason prides himself on his charisma and speaking skills; perhaps Jimbo's being audaciously compelling and a true charmer has sparked some sort of primeval competitive instinct in the soul of Jason Scott?
Now, please don't get me wrong: I like wiseguys. In fact, I'd probably go so far as to identify myself as one, but being a wiseass without whipping out the goods to back it up? I'm not such a fan of that. Y'all remember my hangup on truthiness (If not, check it two posts ago). I thought that I could identify with Jason as far as goes placing a high value on veracity, but now I'm not so sure he's even advocating for dissemination of truth and eradication of misinformation. Instead, he's just kind've windbagging along, mumbling "you're making stupid edits." Additionally, I'd assert that participating in vandalism and name-calling without being able to state precisely why and manifest why you've any claim on doing so does nothing to promote personal integrity or make any situation better. Jason claims he's an inclusionist, but it seems he'd rather be an exclusive, smirking lurker of the wiki-wiki-world (yes: please do read that with full-on DJ turntable sounds) than work to advance and improve a technology/community/phenomena for which he claims to have so much respect. I get the sense that Jason is content to be lord of his purportedly clean and upstanding limited wiki-land (was anybody else curious about the communities in which he participates? I was. I should have inquired) than sustain a demotion to share his expertise and become a lesser baronet of the wiki Universe.
In my post from earlier this week I said that Jason was entertaining and interesting to read. This is still true, and he was engaging in class (just ask him if he's a compelling and engaging speaker--he'll tell you!). In much the same way, class clowns make class more fun, too. This doesn't mean, though, that they're the guys you respect as they shoot spitballs at the group giving a subpar presentation up at the front of the classroom. As in Jason's articles, his talk in class left me silent not out of satisfaction, but rather hushed and dazzled by intricate circumulocution, questioning whether I'd just missed the obvious or if there had been no real point made.
In all, I think Jason's got the goods up there in his head as to why Wikipedia is an evil machine and deserves to be overthrown (or at the very least sacked and remodeled) but until he lays out in plain terms why this is so rather than defaulting to broad negative assertions supported by entertaining examples, I've yet to be convinced.
Come on, Jason. Be a smart bully and deliver.
Being a writing tutor I'm especially adept at wading through bullshit to dig from the muck swallowed diamond rings, toy soldiers and gold bullion, so before tonight's appearance and with my readings of Jason's Wikipedia criticism as background, I'd decided that Jason had begun to make some good points in his articles and the speech, their only true fault being lack of cohesion. His written/transcribed material, while entertaining, proved continually troubling for me because by the end of whatever piece I'd been cruising, I still wasn't very clear as to Jason's actual stance save a general sentiment of negativity toward Wikipedia. Jason's more than willing to step in and make attacks--(hello Wiki-vandalism!)--but doesn't seem to have much in the way of productive solutions. Nor do I get the sense that he's clearly thought out and identified in explicable terms the core of what he sees as being wrong with Wikipedia's system.
Exactly as he does in his articles, tonight he talked around suggestions of points, providing lots of interesting factual information regurgitated into our class' collective hungry gullet and I'm full, but not satisfied. If in fact he can, I'd like to see Jason dredge up from his miasma of swirling ideas what he sees as the core faults of Wikipedia, whip them into the shape of ugly hobgoblins he can plainly expose for the entire world to see beyond a doubt, and proceed to rip them to shreds as, with his presumed body of knowledge, he should be able to do with his eyes closed. What I wonder--and what I wondered after I'd done my reading of his stuff for the last real post--is if Jason knows what these flaws are, or if he's just one of those individuals who's dangerously fond of being contentious, devilishly grinning over steepled fingers, giggling "I know more than you know!" Or maybe he's just jealous of Jimbo? The resentment seemed rather personal. After all, Jason prides himself on his charisma and speaking skills; perhaps Jimbo's being audaciously compelling and a true charmer has sparked some sort of primeval competitive instinct in the soul of Jason Scott?
Now, please don't get me wrong: I like wiseguys. In fact, I'd probably go so far as to identify myself as one, but being a wiseass without whipping out the goods to back it up? I'm not such a fan of that. Y'all remember my hangup on truthiness (If not, check it two posts ago). I thought that I could identify with Jason as far as goes placing a high value on veracity, but now I'm not so sure he's even advocating for dissemination of truth and eradication of misinformation. Instead, he's just kind've windbagging along, mumbling "you're making stupid edits." Additionally, I'd assert that participating in vandalism and name-calling without being able to state precisely why and manifest why you've any claim on doing so does nothing to promote personal integrity or make any situation better. Jason claims he's an inclusionist, but it seems he'd rather be an exclusive, smirking lurker of the wiki-wiki-world (yes: please do read that with full-on DJ turntable sounds) than work to advance and improve a technology/community/phenomena for which he claims to have so much respect. I get the sense that Jason is content to be lord of his purportedly clean and upstanding limited wiki-land (was anybody else curious about the communities in which he participates? I was. I should have inquired) than sustain a demotion to share his expertise and become a lesser baronet of the wiki Universe.
In my post from earlier this week I said that Jason was entertaining and interesting to read. This is still true, and he was engaging in class (just ask him if he's a compelling and engaging speaker--he'll tell you!). In much the same way, class clowns make class more fun, too. This doesn't mean, though, that they're the guys you respect as they shoot spitballs at the group giving a subpar presentation up at the front of the classroom. As in Jason's articles, his talk in class left me silent not out of satisfaction, but rather hushed and dazzled by intricate circumulocution, questioning whether I'd just missed the obvious or if there had been no real point made.
In all, I think Jason's got the goods up there in his head as to why Wikipedia is an evil machine and deserves to be overthrown (or at the very least sacked and remodeled) but until he lays out in plain terms why this is so rather than defaulting to broad negative assertions supported by entertaining examples, I've yet to be convinced.
Come on, Jason. Be a smart bully and deliver.
Careful distinctions
Aherm.
lit-er-al-ly [lit-er-uh-lee]
–adverb
1. in a literal manner; word for word: to translate literally.
lit-er-ate-ly [lit-er-it-ly]
–adverb
1. well-informedly, knowledgeably.
lit-er-al-ly [lit-er-uh-lee]
–adverb
1. in a literal manner; word for word: to translate literally.
lit-er-ate-ly [lit-er-it-ly]
–adverb
1. well-informedly, knowledgeably.
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Mmm. The scent of idealism in the evening
Every time I gird my loins and venture across campus to Vernon Street I am forcibly reminded within one boozy hour of the myriad reasons I don't go to the frats on a regular basis. Somehow in my old age (Wait; scratch that. I developed this stance after my third or so week at Trinity) I've become a social vegetarian--now even the sight of the Vernon Street meat market sends my stomach into nauseous backflips. The same blank faces, the same porky shoulders, the same trembling ribs as every weekend at the shop and I'm thinking I'd like to go out to the plot in the back and grow (or shoot!) my own. It doesn't matter how much cheap beer I've been urged to swill, or at how many bass-thumps-per-minute the music's chunking along--the Vernon social scene perpetually disamuses me. This is why I am well slept: last night I saw me walking home by 1 a.m., pondering college life and, by the time I reached Summit, pretty solidly deciding I'll stay in my cozy room and take my chances being seen as a perverse and insular social anomaly if it means I'll be exempt from false interactions, strappy tanks and Natty Ice. There goes that notion of Vernon providing an ideal social scene...
On to another falsely ideal system!
Jason's articles were interesting and, shockingly, I actually did read through the transcript of the 45-minute-speech Colin indicated we might understandably skip. I respect what I think Jason's saying in regards to the evils of Wikipedia (that it's a really subjective tool that we ugly humans have run away with and shat upon and manipulated in our standardly devious little mammalian ways, giggling demonically and cackling "look what I can do!" over and over as we twist and tie and tear apart); what I find perhaps even more interesting than his points, though, is that he doesn't directly state what he opines to be wrong with Wikipedia. He never explicitly says, "This, this, and this is a problem," but instead is implicitly suggestive, backstroking around what he sees as primary issues with really entertaining metaphors and the terse, sardonic one-liners that kept me reading after I might have stopped (my favorite being the wry "wow, what a great thing is man") that smack of a healthy dosage of Dane Cookism rather than goold ol' exposition.
So Wikipedia was basically founded on a high, hippie-dippie, let's hold hands and sing and believe in the basic good of man notion? Surprising. Jason says of Wikipedia's founder: "Jimbo Wales is a Randian Objectivist. This means that in his particular interpretation of that philosophical thought, he does not like to interfere, he likes to give general ideas, he likes to trust in people, and he likes that the truth, that the truth represents an honest objective entity that cannot be questioned. A is A. That is to say, if somebody says "this is blue", no amount of your stupid liberal whining is going to make it not blue. That's the theory behind that aspect of Randian Objectivism." In theory, this is really quite lovely, but the truth is never "the truth," and even when "the truth" has been processed through a number of lenses it's still less truth-y than it could be (which Jason does sort of address). Seems to me that in his Randian Objectivism Jim Walkes accidentally started off a great space for a cyber information disseminationg commune that believes in shifting viewpoints all holding valid information and truthiness. How postmodern.
I'm particularly fond of the portion of Jason's speech in which he talks about Carmine DeSapio, Jason offering a little criticism of the dangers of promoting half-truths: "Now, who gives a shit? It's Carmine DeSapio, he's the last guy of Tammany Hall, I get it, we're done. And that's the problem, is you have to say: Well, which one are you going to do? Are you going to self-aggrandize, or are you going to criticise? And I'm going to go with criticising because again, when you say sum of human knowledge..."
I really like (and subscribe to) the idea that if it's not the the truth, it's not the truth, and there IS no median and no acceptable venue for bullshit. Personal truths can be taken only so far--there has to be one whole, agreed upon truth at the end of the day, and it will probably be an amalgamation of many versions of what the truth is. What I think I hear Jason saying, though not explicitly, is that if you're promoting something as a fact, make goddamn sure it's a fact. Approximations, no matter how near, have absolutely no business being labelled as truths--thus, the danger of Wikipedia and the outrageously high likelihood of misinformation.
Perhaps I didn't read enough, so somebody set me straight if this is the case--but I couldn't identify any place where Jason provides and remedies. I'd be really curious to hear from him the direction in which he'd like Wikipedia to move--you know--maybe propose some alternatives. How would Jason fix what he's criticizing? How would he make Wikipedia a more reliable source? Anybody have the answer? Is this written somewhere, or shall I scour more?
All in all, I don't hear Jason advocating for a 20th century equivalent of heretical bookburning, but instead for some regulation to verify truth for truth and skim the bullshit off the top of the information stew.
Also, I would have really, really liked it if Wikipedia HAD been called "Jimbo's Big Bag o' Trivia." If such were the case, damn, would I ever have some ideas as to how to remedy the site's "boring color scheme and layout." Somehow, and I have no idea why, said ideas all involve pigs in bandanas and red and white checkerboard patterns with roosters scrambling along the borders set to a backdrop of "Turkey in the Straw" and barnyard noise audio features... Now if that isn't worthy of respect...Saturday, October 14, 2006
I love this woman
With every last shred of my medium sized, only-partially-blighted, preshrunk American soul.
Watch it and be entranced. Go ahead.
All hail Regina Spektor.
Last month at Toad's Place I stood about 3 feet away from the teacup sized singer whilst she gave what's easily the best live performance I've seen. Though she welcomed on stage a bassist, perhaps one (two!?) guitarists and a percussionist, she tickled/banged/caressed out almost all of her new album, Begin To Hope, on the ivories, solo. Despite having a cold, Regina sang like a particularly winsome angel between her ladylike sniffles and the decidedly unladylike (but outrageously endearing) hocking of something I'd even term a "cute" loogey into a roll of toilet paper. For anyone who's read Kafka's "Josephine The Singer, or The Mousefolk," the depressive Czech wrote of Josephine's particularly moving "piping," and though he was poking some oblique fun at Josephine when he said this, I make none of Regina when I say she pipes quite beautifully.
I'll admit I do have a bit of a girl crush on Regina Spektor (not even mucous can diminish my love!), so I'm a bit biased. And I'm okay with that. But please--don't take my word for how amazing she is: do yourself a favor and go buy Begin To Hope, Eleven Eleven, Songs, or Soviet Kitsch and proceed to become as thoroughly enamored as I am. Or when you see me ask me to whip out my iPod and I'll give you a truly fine Regina sampling and preach to you the wonders of her mythologically laden, lyrically sparkling little gems. Forget pleasing: I aim to convert. :)
Watch it and be entranced. Go ahead.
All hail Regina Spektor.
Last month at Toad's Place I stood about 3 feet away from the teacup sized singer whilst she gave what's easily the best live performance I've seen. Though she welcomed on stage a bassist, perhaps one (two!?) guitarists and a percussionist, she tickled/banged/caressed out almost all of her new album, Begin To Hope, on the ivories, solo. Despite having a cold, Regina sang like a particularly winsome angel between her ladylike sniffles and the decidedly unladylike (but outrageously endearing) hocking of something I'd even term a "cute" loogey into a roll of toilet paper. For anyone who's read Kafka's "Josephine The Singer, or The Mousefolk," the depressive Czech wrote of Josephine's particularly moving "piping," and though he was poking some oblique fun at Josephine when he said this, I make none of Regina when I say she pipes quite beautifully.
I'll admit I do have a bit of a girl crush on Regina Spektor (not even mucous can diminish my love!), so I'm a bit biased. And I'm okay with that. But please--don't take my word for how amazing she is: do yourself a favor and go buy Begin To Hope, Eleven Eleven, Songs, or Soviet Kitsch and proceed to become as thoroughly enamored as I am. Or when you see me ask me to whip out my iPod and I'll give you a truly fine Regina sampling and preach to you the wonders of her mythologically laden, lyrically sparkling little gems. Forget pleasing: I aim to convert. :)
Video killed...writers?
Just a thought: perhaps part of the reason there's such a smorgasbord of ways to represent oneself on the Internet now (not just via prose, but audio and video, too) is because some of us are far better at speaking and acting, giving a holistic, three dimensional impression, than we are at writing. Or perhaps vlogging is preferable because some people simply aren't stellar spellers or in love with the written word. :) With all the different mediums we can use to harness this media it makes it very accessible to people of many sundry talents and strengths. (Thank God blogging doesn't necessarily involve math, or I'd be driven to videolog, too). Then again, nobody'd watch my ugly mug posting every day...or at least I highly doubt it.
I think video is a fantastic addition to what we can do with the internet, but as someone who IS a lover of lexicon and an adamant enthusiast of the written word, I fear that we may be slowly eradicating the respect for and attention to writing it so well deserves. When middle schools begin offering classes in vlog casting in favor of essay writing, I'll probably draw myself a warm bath, light some candles, doff the fluorescents, turn on some Enya and sob until the water goes cold. Or just slash my wrists with my celadon inked fountain pen. But I suppose I'm just a bit of a drama queen, and I only have Enya on tape and no longer own a tape deck. There goes that dream.
Michelle Malkin IS indeed a firecracker. Her video "open letter to YouTube" is simple, pithy and well conceived. I think it's probably pretty impactful, too, because Malkin got to be an actress--she got to almost have a conversation--because of that video and because that letter was in fact a VIDEO, not a letter. She may have made more of an impression upon the YouTube execs who watched that than she might have had she simply written an incendiary email. Attaching a human face to a thing (especially if this "thing" happens to have the potential to inflame) always makes it that much more compelling; and when you're clever, attractive, and have excellent public-speaking skills, using these assets are not only natural but necessary. By accessing video as her medium for rebuttal Malkin clearly selected what would be best for her persona and her cause.
On to blogs and art!
Quite frankly, I don't know what the story is behind this site--it's not something that I can or want to sum up in a handful of words--but I like it. A lot. This amalgamation of videos by creator Mica and the vibrant little implied community swirling about it really appeals to me. Mica's About Me section reads like an introduction I'd like to have made as a precursor to making a new friend (i.e. Mica's cool shit, and her shit is cool, too. I'd seek her out to be friends if I lived in New York).
I particularly enjoyed watching this for its random circusy music and Pythonesque motion.
Mica says, "The moving images I put here are not even sketches, they are more like doodles." In this case, one of those really elaborate, astoundingly finely done doodles you orchestrate in class whilst your wizened Professor drones on about psychoanalytic theory as applied to 15th century to-do lists of aging housewives and hopejusthopehopehope that somebody looks over your shoulder because, really, your doodle is amazing but you don't want to brag. Really. I think Mica's vlog stands testimony to how very liberating blogs are for artists of all sorts. This medium offers an instant, interactive audience that can watch, think, react, and give feedback. What other venue (aside from perhaps the stage in stand up comedy) allows for this? I keep thinking about degrees of perfomativity in various art forms and in various venues, and I'd like to say that there must be something similar to what blogs facilitate. I first thought "Hey. Why not plays?" but the theater audience is more or less a quiet, removed spectator (unless, of course, the drama unfolding is TRULY atrocious and someone's come armed with rotting fruit). Blogs really are unique in their immediate capacity for critical review, feeling out your audience's demands, and getting an instantaneous idea of the reception of your work (whether you write, vlog, sing, or strip). Hmph. Pretty liberating and pretty scary all at once.
I also really enjoyed this. Okay, I admit I liked it first because of its title's allusion to Cervantes' masterwork but I got dragged into the trippy video drama shortly thereafter. It's an anxious internet soap opera. Behind each episode there's this twitchy edge that wants to say just a little bit more. The episodes could easily lapse into full on cheeze (yes, with a z), but they don't. Instead, they seem honest and relevant and really, truly like the stories you'd be told if you were able to perch on the shoulder of a stranger on the street. A little campy? Mmm. Yeah. Is that the appeal? Shit, yeah it is! I hate TV unless it involves Hugh Laurie or the best show to ever go off television for being achingly too smart, but I rather like chasingwindmills and so, I hear, did a certain crazed campesino living on the Iberian Peninsula.
I love Don Quixote. And videos. And also ginger tea and snickerdoodles (obviously my Saturday nights are incredibly exciting and full of licentious and illegal activities).
Paz.
I think video is a fantastic addition to what we can do with the internet, but as someone who IS a lover of lexicon and an adamant enthusiast of the written word, I fear that we may be slowly eradicating the respect for and attention to writing it so well deserves. When middle schools begin offering classes in vlog casting in favor of essay writing, I'll probably draw myself a warm bath, light some candles, doff the fluorescents, turn on some Enya and sob until the water goes cold. Or just slash my wrists with my celadon inked fountain pen. But I suppose I'm just a bit of a drama queen, and I only have Enya on tape and no longer own a tape deck. There goes that dream.
Michelle Malkin IS indeed a firecracker. Her video "open letter to YouTube" is simple, pithy and well conceived. I think it's probably pretty impactful, too, because Malkin got to be an actress--she got to almost have a conversation--because of that video and because that letter was in fact a VIDEO, not a letter. She may have made more of an impression upon the YouTube execs who watched that than she might have had she simply written an incendiary email. Attaching a human face to a thing (especially if this "thing" happens to have the potential to inflame) always makes it that much more compelling; and when you're clever, attractive, and have excellent public-speaking skills, using these assets are not only natural but necessary. By accessing video as her medium for rebuttal Malkin clearly selected what would be best for her persona and her cause.
On to blogs and art!
Quite frankly, I don't know what the story is behind this site--it's not something that I can or want to sum up in a handful of words--but I like it. A lot. This amalgamation of videos by creator Mica and the vibrant little implied community swirling about it really appeals to me. Mica's About Me section reads like an introduction I'd like to have made as a precursor to making a new friend (i.e. Mica's cool shit, and her shit is cool, too. I'd seek her out to be friends if I lived in New York).
I particularly enjoyed watching this for its random circusy music and Pythonesque motion.
Mica says, "The moving images I put here are not even sketches, they are more like doodles." In this case, one of those really elaborate, astoundingly finely done doodles you orchestrate in class whilst your wizened Professor drones on about psychoanalytic theory as applied to 15th century to-do lists of aging housewives and hopejusthopehopehope that somebody looks over your shoulder because, really, your doodle is amazing but you don't want to brag. Really. I think Mica's vlog stands testimony to how very liberating blogs are for artists of all sorts. This medium offers an instant, interactive audience that can watch, think, react, and give feedback. What other venue (aside from perhaps the stage in stand up comedy) allows for this? I keep thinking about degrees of perfomativity in various art forms and in various venues, and I'd like to say that there must be something similar to what blogs facilitate. I first thought "Hey. Why not plays?" but the theater audience is more or less a quiet, removed spectator (unless, of course, the drama unfolding is TRULY atrocious and someone's come armed with rotting fruit). Blogs really are unique in their immediate capacity for critical review, feeling out your audience's demands, and getting an instantaneous idea of the reception of your work (whether you write, vlog, sing, or strip). Hmph. Pretty liberating and pretty scary all at once.
I also really enjoyed this. Okay, I admit I liked it first because of its title's allusion to Cervantes' masterwork but I got dragged into the trippy video drama shortly thereafter. It's an anxious internet soap opera. Behind each episode there's this twitchy edge that wants to say just a little bit more. The episodes could easily lapse into full on cheeze (yes, with a z), but they don't. Instead, they seem honest and relevant and really, truly like the stories you'd be told if you were able to perch on the shoulder of a stranger on the street. A little campy? Mmm. Yeah. Is that the appeal? Shit, yeah it is! I hate TV unless it involves Hugh Laurie or the best show to ever go off television for being achingly too smart, but I rather like chasingwindmills and so, I hear, did a certain crazed campesino living on the Iberian Peninsula.
I love Don Quixote. And videos. And also ginger tea and snickerdoodles (obviously my Saturday nights are incredibly exciting and full of licentious and illegal activities).
Paz.
Thursday, October 12, 2006
I suck at titles and always have.
What arrested me in the Johnson article is the idea of creating virtual worlds where there might be "little virtual poetry readings," and such. Sounds cool, doesn't it? Well. Au contraire: I have reason to believe this may actually happen and have an outrageously negative impact upon human life. Read on.
I have a friend who, in sophomore year, was so enthralled by his World of Warcraft game and so unwilling to suspend it (even for the moment it might take to call a helpful friend who'd volunteer to help him in a time of need) that he refrained from handing in a twelve page final paper he actually wrote, and consequently failed his class. He needed this class for his major and is taking it again this year. The worst part? He thinks it's funny. Yes, ladies and gents--this is in no way fabular. The sacrifice of reality for cyber-reality terrifies me and makes me wonder where the value once placed upon genuine human contact has really gone. No wonder, I say, so many of us are overworked, depressed, and feel isolated. Direct result of too many hours spent in solitary amusement in darkened rooms with layers and layers of grease-stained pizza boxes, sulking over a W.O.W lose ? Maybe.
...Then again, I myself have been known to disappear to my lair and IM for hours at a time and into the wee hours of the morning, rambling about many sundry inanities and confiding secrets I wouldn't tell people face to face. I'm just as guilty as my friend who failed his class, just perhaps not quite as much of an isolationist nerd. (Hey. Watch it. I said quite.)
From onewordforeskimo's post I particularly enjoyed this question:
"Do blogs disseminate information in a clear and direct way? What sort of information? What sort of blogs?"
Ah. Clear and direct. What IS clear and direct, really? Jenn says that blogs are like literature in that they are suggestions of perceptions of experiences once had. Now if that isn't tangled, I really don't know what is. Also, "clearness" and "directness" also really depends upon what one's intent is in writing a blog or even a specific post. For political blogs such as the Lamont machines, perhaps information IS indeed disseminated in a clear and direct manner, but clear and direct only means readily readable and seemingly straightforward--this is certainly not to imply that whatever you might encounter in a blog isn't hand selected to produce an effect and fraught with personal biases and perceptions (and also agendas! gasp! not those!).
And I'm a tired old woman with a cold, so I suppose now I'll do creative writing homework and then go to bed. :)
Next topic: YouTube! For which I intend to post at least something YouTube. (Hey, Coffee--look. I endorse it, too). ;)
I have a friend who, in sophomore year, was so enthralled by his World of Warcraft game and so unwilling to suspend it (even for the moment it might take to call a helpful friend who'd volunteer to help him in a time of need) that he refrained from handing in a twelve page final paper he actually wrote, and consequently failed his class. He needed this class for his major and is taking it again this year. The worst part? He thinks it's funny. Yes, ladies and gents--this is in no way fabular. The sacrifice of reality for cyber-reality terrifies me and makes me wonder where the value once placed upon genuine human contact has really gone. No wonder, I say, so many of us are overworked, depressed, and feel isolated. Direct result of too many hours spent in solitary amusement in darkened rooms with layers and layers of grease-stained pizza boxes, sulking over a W.O.W lose ? Maybe.
...Then again, I myself have been known to disappear to my lair and IM for hours at a time and into the wee hours of the morning, rambling about many sundry inanities and confiding secrets I wouldn't tell people face to face. I'm just as guilty as my friend who failed his class, just perhaps not quite as much of an isolationist nerd. (Hey. Watch it. I said quite.)
From onewordforeskimo's post I particularly enjoyed this question:
"Do blogs disseminate information in a clear and direct way? What sort of information? What sort of blogs?"
Ah. Clear and direct. What IS clear and direct, really? Jenn says that blogs are like literature in that they are suggestions of perceptions of experiences once had. Now if that isn't tangled, I really don't know what is. Also, "clearness" and "directness" also really depends upon what one's intent is in writing a blog or even a specific post. For political blogs such as the Lamont machines, perhaps information IS indeed disseminated in a clear and direct manner, but clear and direct only means readily readable and seemingly straightforward--this is certainly not to imply that whatever you might encounter in a blog isn't hand selected to produce an effect and fraught with personal biases and perceptions (and also agendas! gasp! not those!).
And I'm a tired old woman with a cold, so I suppose now I'll do creative writing homework and then go to bed. :)
Next topic: YouTube! For which I intend to post at least something YouTube. (Hey, Coffee--look. I endorse it, too). ;)
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Like Lazarus, she rises!
My GOD I am behind with my postings.
What have I been doing, you ask? Ah. Well. Obviously lying around eating bonbons. Jeez. As if you have to ask.
No, really, though? I took a side trip to Northampton, MA this weekend to visit my best friend at Smith. As expected, we had a grand old time. I bought convincingly leather-like plastic shoes (what could be better?) and we barhopped long into the night. Martini-ed, I awakened and drove far over the speed limit back to Trinity so I could spend the day working on my thesis proposal and writing a 10-page story for creative fiction, then edit Anthony and Lourdes' vegan cookbook. It's been a busy few days, and the week before that was, too. So. That's where I've been. Shall we sally forth, then?
Google bombing is just like I like things--dirty, interesting and divisive. Over the summer, I learned from the host of phenomenal people here that bombing is "bad advertising," and is the kind of thing that makes your peers want to punch you in the throat when they see you on the street. This is what Louisa would refer to as "inorganic Search Engine Optimization." (See? I learned!). Brent would just say it's dirty shit. Same difference, really.
After that, I tried the stream-of-consciousness internet adventure Colin posed as a suggestion about 8.6 million postings ago. I began with shadowcamels, scrolled down to read about Busker's ball, and ended up with minutemen. (at minute 2:35, do they start chanting "Big fat wosah?" Because unless this is in Boston (which it isn't, because they mention Columbia), there is no excuse and I'm confused). Then I learned that unified gloating can be a healthy exercise in National solidarity. Next, I clicked on Raincoaster's profile link "humor" and saw a bunch of links to OTHER bloggers' wordpress cyber pads. I was intrigued when I saw "office dares" and joyfully cackled for the four minutes it took me to read them. I have something new to do when standing in front of the elevator--sweet.
I moved on to Wiggly's Christmas Folk vs. Bhangra post andfrom there, clicked on a comment thread that took me here--apparently our friend Wiggly (a.k.a. Daniel) has a penchant for yummy smelling grooming products (of which I am also an avid supporter). I then got sidetracked and lost myself in the Body Shop's website and, after navigating to the U.S. Page and clicking on some of my favorite items, stopped just short of whipping out my credit card to go on a totally unnecessary body lotion binge because can't everybody use to be soft? Huh? Fine. So you're saying I'm not justified? Right. Well. I suppose that's true.
I...I should just go take a shower. Yes. That's what I'll do. After all, I've still got a $400 dollar dental apparatus to pay for (sigh).
What have I been doing, you ask? Ah. Well. Obviously lying around eating bonbons. Jeez. As if you have to ask.
No, really, though? I took a side trip to Northampton, MA this weekend to visit my best friend at Smith. As expected, we had a grand old time. I bought convincingly leather-like plastic shoes (what could be better?) and we barhopped long into the night. Martini-ed, I awakened and drove far over the speed limit back to Trinity so I could spend the day working on my thesis proposal and writing a 10-page story for creative fiction, then edit Anthony and Lourdes' vegan cookbook. It's been a busy few days, and the week before that was, too. So. That's where I've been. Shall we sally forth, then?
Google bombing is just like I like things--dirty, interesting and divisive. Over the summer, I learned from the host of phenomenal people here that bombing is "bad advertising," and is the kind of thing that makes your peers want to punch you in the throat when they see you on the street. This is what Louisa would refer to as "inorganic Search Engine Optimization." (See? I learned!). Brent would just say it's dirty shit. Same difference, really.
After that, I tried the stream-of-consciousness internet adventure Colin posed as a suggestion about 8.6 million postings ago. I began with shadowcamels, scrolled down to read about Busker's ball, and ended up with minutemen. (at minute 2:35, do they start chanting "Big fat wosah?" Because unless this is in Boston (which it isn't, because they mention Columbia), there is no excuse and I'm confused). Then I learned that unified gloating can be a healthy exercise in National solidarity. Next, I clicked on Raincoaster's profile link "humor" and saw a bunch of links to OTHER bloggers' wordpress cyber pads. I was intrigued when I saw "office dares" and joyfully cackled for the four minutes it took me to read them. I have something new to do when standing in front of the elevator--sweet.
I moved on to Wiggly's Christmas Folk vs. Bhangra post andfrom there, clicked on a comment thread that took me here--apparently our friend Wiggly (a.k.a. Daniel) has a penchant for yummy smelling grooming products (of which I am also an avid supporter). I then got sidetracked and lost myself in the Body Shop's website and, after navigating to the U.S. Page and clicking on some of my favorite items, stopped just short of whipping out my credit card to go on a totally unnecessary body lotion binge because can't everybody use to be soft? Huh? Fine. So you're saying I'm not justified? Right. Well. I suppose that's true.
I...I should just go take a shower. Yes. That's what I'll do. After all, I've still got a $400 dollar dental apparatus to pay for (sigh).
Saturday, September 30, 2006
Lamont Stuff
The sense of community is overwhelmingly strong in My Left Nutmeg. This element (something not quite so overt in Kos, for example) made me really want to keep reading it, get involved in the comments and go back through archives--I got excited about what these people were up to. which for me and politics is no mean feat (it isn't apathy: it's thatI'm politically undereducated. I'll go ahead and admit it). The frisson of activism and excitement running through the blog is pretty tangible (or at least was for me). While it is in no way as rife with material as DailyKos (and there's no reason it need be--My Left Nutmeg is not National, and it has a level of specificity to one topic that Kos does not), it's still pretty stuffed with side links but doesn't feel as unmanageable and overwhelming as Kos does.
In response to Colin's "Is Ned Bloggy?" question... That's actually an issue that arose in my head. Sure, he's liberal so the alternative, "funky transgressives" would be more likely to adopt him, stroke him on the head, and feed him soymilk and all organic, wheat-free cookies but he doesn't strike me as THE man they'd want to do this for were they presented with a panoply of other candidates. Then again, appearances are only appearances--they're suit, skin, silk tie and sportcoat deep. There is something about the essence of Lamont that appealed and continues to appeal to bloggers--I couldn't tell you what, precisely, but it's there. I guess Ned IS bloggy. (Quick, Colin--Wikipedia that and claim it as yours!).
It's 1:11 a.m. on Sunday and I haven't gone out tonight. Work is kicking me in the ass--hard--and it's only October 1st. (whimper) Why?
In response to Colin's "Is Ned Bloggy?" question... That's actually an issue that arose in my head. Sure, he's liberal so the alternative, "funky transgressives" would be more likely to adopt him, stroke him on the head, and feed him soymilk and all organic, wheat-free cookies but he doesn't strike me as THE man they'd want to do this for were they presented with a panoply of other candidates. Then again, appearances are only appearances--they're suit, skin, silk tie and sportcoat deep. There is something about the essence of Lamont that appealed and continues to appeal to bloggers--I couldn't tell you what, precisely, but it's there. I guess Ned IS bloggy. (Quick, Colin--Wikipedia that and claim it as yours!).
It's 1:11 a.m. on Sunday and I haven't gone out tonight. Work is kicking me in the ass--hard--and it's only October 1st. (whimper) Why?
Friday, September 29, 2006
Rhetoric Rationle
Now a more cohesive, better informed look at Coffee Rhetoric.
Coffee's authorial voice has certainly shifted over the years. Her hot topics, her preoccupations and interests, too, have varied and traveled farther away from the very personal sketch-of-a-day type entries we see from 2004, starting with her Birthday festivities with best friend, Cat. Because Coffee's blog is so heavily personal (VASTLY unlike Kottke.org, say), rife with photos and details, it makes perfect sense that the blog, like the woman, would be continuously evolving over two years. Her blog in particular, because of its very personal nature, provides a uniquely documentable example of how personae do indeed shift and change as time moves on.
Coffee's older body of posts consits of what I would truly, honestly characterize as an arresting synthesis of the confessional, the creative, the highly incendiary and humorous reportage of the seemingly mundane. Coffee is occasionally an advocate. She occasionally writes pithy commentary on the state of her world and her community as she sees it, accessing her own life as a jumping off point for such. She's got parts of a stories in there, short stories she's working on and other creative ventures. This, for example, is a really finely written, metaphorically thick and juuuuicy, almost spoken-word type post (how one manages to convey that over cyber space I couldn't tell you, but she does). From what I reviewed of the 2006 archives, she doesn't engage in this type of writing so much anymore, or if she does, she's not as quick to share it. A shame. As we confront the more current entries in Coffee's blog we find her heavy on theYouTube and the presence of more and more "dark moments" is notable. This isn't a new thing, mind you; Coffee has exposed her "darkness" before--eloquently and honestly.
If there is one thread of commonality in Coffee's blog it is that she is defiantly herself. So, She doesn't seem the woman to roll over and succumb to theatrics. The two above links show her dissatisfied, restless, and unhappy, but not despondent--she's got a fair amount of resolve. But her most recent post about having lost her way is very unlike the two I've linked above; it is dramatic to say the least and compromises the strong, self-sufficient image she's created for herself--jarring, no? The number of times she posts about needing to find her center and feeling lost in the recent past detracted, when I first read the very recent stuff, from her credibility as a writer and spurred the rather scathing comment I posted on Chris's blog. After having read her earlier entries I suspect, though, that the vaguely victimized and (take note readers all: I am characterizing a tone here, not a person, not an essence, not an entire blog: hold the affront for a breath or two) whiny woman discernible in a couple of recent postings is not what Coffee is--in fact, these posts feel/sound less like her than anything else in the rest of the blog. Don't believe me? Read back. It's worth it to see the shift. These entries mark what, in all likelihood, is an unfortunate epoch for Coffee Rhetoric's cyberpersona. Chances that she'll rally seemed good--her witty rant on the runners showed some promise-- but it seems a self-imposed hiatus is what's in order. If may be beneficial for Coffee to put herself on the backburner--I suspect she'll make a return with the YouTube and the voice that is decidedly not hers boiled off and with more of what she has been--creative, irascible, surly and incisive--distilled and ready for thoughtful consumption.
Coffee's authorial voice has certainly shifted over the years. Her hot topics, her preoccupations and interests, too, have varied and traveled farther away from the very personal sketch-of-a-day type entries we see from 2004, starting with her Birthday festivities with best friend, Cat. Because Coffee's blog is so heavily personal (VASTLY unlike Kottke.org, say), rife with photos and details, it makes perfect sense that the blog, like the woman, would be continuously evolving over two years. Her blog in particular, because of its very personal nature, provides a uniquely documentable example of how personae do indeed shift and change as time moves on.
Coffee's older body of posts consits of what I would truly, honestly characterize as an arresting synthesis of the confessional, the creative, the highly incendiary and humorous reportage of the seemingly mundane. Coffee is occasionally an advocate. She occasionally writes pithy commentary on the state of her world and her community as she sees it, accessing her own life as a jumping off point for such. She's got parts of a stories in there, short stories she's working on and other creative ventures. This, for example, is a really finely written, metaphorically thick and juuuuicy, almost spoken-word type post (how one manages to convey that over cyber space I couldn't tell you, but she does). From what I reviewed of the 2006 archives, she doesn't engage in this type of writing so much anymore, or if she does, she's not as quick to share it. A shame. As we confront the more current entries in Coffee's blog we find her heavy on theYouTube and the presence of more and more "dark moments" is notable. This isn't a new thing, mind you; Coffee has exposed her "darkness" before--eloquently and honestly.
If there is one thread of commonality in Coffee's blog it is that she is defiantly herself. So, She doesn't seem the woman to roll over and succumb to theatrics. The two above links show her dissatisfied, restless, and unhappy, but not despondent--she's got a fair amount of resolve. But her most recent post about having lost her way is very unlike the two I've linked above; it is dramatic to say the least and compromises the strong, self-sufficient image she's created for herself--jarring, no? The number of times she posts about needing to find her center and feeling lost in the recent past detracted, when I first read the very recent stuff, from her credibility as a writer and spurred the rather scathing comment I posted on Chris's blog. After having read her earlier entries I suspect, though, that the vaguely victimized and (take note readers all: I am characterizing a tone here, not a person, not an essence, not an entire blog: hold the affront for a breath or two) whiny woman discernible in a couple of recent postings is not what Coffee is--in fact, these posts feel/sound less like her than anything else in the rest of the blog. Don't believe me? Read back. It's worth it to see the shift. These entries mark what, in all likelihood, is an unfortunate epoch for Coffee Rhetoric's cyberpersona. Chances that she'll rally seemed good--her witty rant on the runners showed some promise-- but it seems a self-imposed hiatus is what's in order. If may be beneficial for Coffee to put herself on the backburner--I suspect she'll make a return with the YouTube and the voice that is decidedly not hers boiled off and with more of what she has been--creative, irascible, surly and incisive--distilled and ready for thoughtful consumption.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Political Blogz
Sleepy eyed, I'm cruising Colin's DD, cofee in hand, sound of dumpsters being emptied outside Summit. Good morning, good morning!
I'm really enjoying the variation between formal, informatively chatty tone and the more aggressive, "in yo FACE" action in this post. These variations (aside, of course, from the topic: in this case, I don't think that it's much other than an interesting, reliable place to get information concerning a hotbutton issue) are the type of thing that keep (at least my) interest in a blog.
I'm learning something by reading these, though: pretty words and spot-on metaphors do not, by any means, equate to success in blogging. This post, for instance, really got me going--I was in raptures over the lovely language and it's a cohesive, well-written unit, to boot. However, I found myself ceasing to read by the ends of the paragraphs. As Brenda noted in class, short, concise paragraphs work best to keep and hold an audience. Gaining momentum by short, terse sentences and keeping blocks of texts undauntingly slim is an excellent tactic. (White space ALWAYS WINS).
What was of particular interest to me in this Conservative blog is the vast difference in comment volume: there are so very few compared to some independent Democratic blogs I've seen. What does this say about Conservatives?
Ok. I have some more to get through and some more to say, but I have to go give a talk to the Mafia First Year Seminar kiddlies about bringing their papers to the Writing Center.
"We will help you with your papers," I stated in the last talk I gave. 'Til that moment, I'd had a rapt audience; their big saucer-eyes had gleamed, particularly hopeful at the prospect of partnering with writing tutors who were just sure to get them better grades. I knew that look--the glee. I had to follow up my statement with, "but be careful what you expect when you come in to see us: we won't write them for you." My audience deflated. I love freshmen.
I'm really enjoying the variation between formal, informatively chatty tone and the more aggressive, "in yo FACE" action in this post. These variations (aside, of course, from the topic: in this case, I don't think that it's much other than an interesting, reliable place to get information concerning a hotbutton issue) are the type of thing that keep (at least my) interest in a blog.
I'm learning something by reading these, though: pretty words and spot-on metaphors do not, by any means, equate to success in blogging. This post, for instance, really got me going--I was in raptures over the lovely language and it's a cohesive, well-written unit, to boot. However, I found myself ceasing to read by the ends of the paragraphs. As Brenda noted in class, short, concise paragraphs work best to keep and hold an audience. Gaining momentum by short, terse sentences and keeping blocks of texts undauntingly slim is an excellent tactic. (White space ALWAYS WINS).
What was of particular interest to me in this Conservative blog is the vast difference in comment volume: there are so very few compared to some independent Democratic blogs I've seen. What does this say about Conservatives?
Ok. I have some more to get through and some more to say, but I have to go give a talk to the Mafia First Year Seminar kiddlies about bringing their papers to the Writing Center.
"We will help you with your papers," I stated in the last talk I gave. 'Til that moment, I'd had a rapt audience; their big saucer-eyes had gleamed, particularly hopeful at the prospect of partnering with writing tutors who were just sure to get them better grades. I knew that look--the glee. I had to follow up my statement with, "but be careful what you expect when you come in to see us: we won't write them for you." My audience deflated. I love freshmen.
Monday, September 25, 2006
Now THIS is nonsense
I sat there during my second three-hour-class of the day and stared.
"We" was the first word. I looked around at my classmates. We, I thought. Okay.
"We are." Deeply philosophical? Why not? We're thinking. We are. Deep. Let's go have a drum circle on the quad and smoke a hookah.
"We are outside!!" the statement was completed by the noun: outside.
That's what the chalkboard said. Due to the headachy, painfully alert but fuzzily absent stupor of the caffeine-addict caffeine deprived, this statement nattered at me. I gawped at all through class, irritable. We are not, I thought crossly, outside.
Messages read by an audience unintended to ever have seen them, processed by people who are unequipped with the ambient information that suffices to flesh out an idea of what the messages truly mean, why they are pertinent, why there are TWO! not ONE! exclamation points--they've always fascinated me. Who is outside? I don't know. But apparently we are, and I'm not a part of the collective "we." Things unseen, audiences unintended, are endlessly compelling--maybe it's why I like blogs so well--they provide the possibility for mysteries to be unraveled and conjectures to be made to supplement the sad lack of information with which we're often confronted.
That wasn't all the chalkboard said, though.
"We are outside!" was the top line. Appended to the note, boxed out to lend subtle focus, was written, "Come join us!" So class let out, outside, and I did. I was, however, no more a part of the invisible, unidentified "we" than I was during class time, when I was decidedly not outside. So how do I get on the inside of the outside? I think I don't.
Interesting, maybe. Real post next.
"We" was the first word. I looked around at my classmates. We, I thought. Okay.
"We are." Deeply philosophical? Why not? We're thinking. We are. Deep. Let's go have a drum circle on the quad and smoke a hookah.
"We are outside!!" the statement was completed by the noun: outside.
That's what the chalkboard said. Due to the headachy, painfully alert but fuzzily absent stupor of the caffeine-addict caffeine deprived, this statement nattered at me. I gawped at all through class, irritable. We are not, I thought crossly, outside.
Messages read by an audience unintended to ever have seen them, processed by people who are unequipped with the ambient information that suffices to flesh out an idea of what the messages truly mean, why they are pertinent, why there are TWO! not ONE! exclamation points--they've always fascinated me. Who is outside? I don't know. But apparently we are, and I'm not a part of the collective "we." Things unseen, audiences unintended, are endlessly compelling--maybe it's why I like blogs so well--they provide the possibility for mysteries to be unraveled and conjectures to be made to supplement the sad lack of information with which we're often confronted.
That wasn't all the chalkboard said, though.
"We are outside!" was the top line. Appended to the note, boxed out to lend subtle focus, was written, "Come join us!" So class let out, outside, and I did. I was, however, no more a part of the invisible, unidentified "we" than I was during class time, when I was decidedly not outside. So how do I get on the inside of the outside? I think I don't.
Interesting, maybe. Real post next.
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Kvetching and Kos
It's happened again.
Another academic year's freshly begun and who, pray tell, be the maid sporting dusky blue undereye circles who is so particularly fond of occupying the mirror beside my bed? She's growing a really charming specimen of a unibrow, which may indicate either a) she's going for the natural woman look, or b) there simply hasn't been time to tweeze. Her hair is disheveled and her look is wan, disheartened yet strangely resigned. Her skin's been better, but also been worse--thank God its complexion is nowhere approaching that fateful week in high school when her face erupted into a Balkan terrain of angry hormonal disuptes in the form of disgruntled whiteheads. No. Not so mountainous yet. Good. She's still recognizable, even.
Oh, hey! It's me! Gorgeous.
As usual I've overbooked myself. With three classes that require a fair amount of sustained independent reading and writing, not to mention my thesis (on which I am so utterly behind and underprepared it makes me quite sick, so I'll spare you that particular subject of bellyachery), Writing Center commitments, delightful RA crap, and trying to put finishing touches on the fellowship application, I'm running on E and it's only September 26th. YES. It's almost like when I was rowing. Minus the spandex, blisters, and three-hour practices, of course.
At this point, I'm well on my way to growing up to be just like the modern noble savages depicted by this. Hell. At least someone appreciates.
On to pertinent issues!
Tonight I cruised DailyKos. This blog superstructure is a combination of two things that terrify me: one, a vast amount of information and melange of confusing and competing links that I cannot possibly imagine being able to surf, ever, and the second being politics. Nontheless, here: I tried.
In and of itself, DailyKos has a lot of fascinating things to read. I myself was particularly interested in Miss Laura's brief rant on intergenerational feministic sparring and after I tutor tonight, I hope to be able to post a little more (this may or may not happen this evening) on that topic. But, anyway, DailyKos--a community space for the politically inclined to come together, post, share ideas and opinions about myriad different subjects. The blog is supported by advertising, which I found a little distracting, but there's so much truly good, meaty information and good reading there that I can dismiss it, and Kos is firmly opposed to ubiquitous linking (good on him--non-organic SEOing and trading links on a "I'll scracth your back if you scratch mine" basis isn't good for ANYONE'S integrity). Search function = convenient. Also: I think I must be extraordinarily dumb here, but if this site is largely based upon its users contribution, where is Kos' voice?
Now that I've cruised around the site some, though, I no longer find it so daunting. Score!
Okay. Time 4 me 2 go tutor kidz riting. Until later! (or tomorrow...when I'm not desperately sleepy, I hope).
Another academic year's freshly begun and who, pray tell, be the maid sporting dusky blue undereye circles who is so particularly fond of occupying the mirror beside my bed? She's growing a really charming specimen of a unibrow, which may indicate either a) she's going for the natural woman look, or b) there simply hasn't been time to tweeze. Her hair is disheveled and her look is wan, disheartened yet strangely resigned. Her skin's been better, but also been worse--thank God its complexion is nowhere approaching that fateful week in high school when her face erupted into a Balkan terrain of angry hormonal disuptes in the form of disgruntled whiteheads. No. Not so mountainous yet. Good. She's still recognizable, even.
Oh, hey! It's me! Gorgeous.
As usual I've overbooked myself. With three classes that require a fair amount of sustained independent reading and writing, not to mention my thesis (on which I am so utterly behind and underprepared it makes me quite sick, so I'll spare you that particular subject of bellyachery), Writing Center commitments, delightful RA crap, and trying to put finishing touches on the fellowship application, I'm running on E and it's only September 26th. YES. It's almost like when I was rowing. Minus the spandex, blisters, and three-hour practices, of course.
At this point, I'm well on my way to growing up to be just like the modern noble savages depicted by this. Hell. At least someone appreciates.
On to pertinent issues!
Tonight I cruised DailyKos. This blog superstructure is a combination of two things that terrify me: one, a vast amount of information and melange of confusing and competing links that I cannot possibly imagine being able to surf, ever, and the second being politics. Nontheless, here: I tried.
In and of itself, DailyKos has a lot of fascinating things to read. I myself was particularly interested in Miss Laura's brief rant on intergenerational feministic sparring and after I tutor tonight, I hope to be able to post a little more (this may or may not happen this evening) on that topic. But, anyway, DailyKos--a community space for the politically inclined to come together, post, share ideas and opinions about myriad different subjects. The blog is supported by advertising, which I found a little distracting, but there's so much truly good, meaty information and good reading there that I can dismiss it, and Kos is firmly opposed to ubiquitous linking (good on him--non-organic SEOing and trading links on a "I'll scracth your back if you scratch mine" basis isn't good for ANYONE'S integrity). Search function = convenient. Also: I think I must be extraordinarily dumb here, but if this site is largely based upon its users contribution, where is Kos' voice?
Now that I've cruised around the site some, though, I no longer find it so daunting. Score!
Okay. Time 4 me 2 go tutor kidz riting. Until later! (or tomorrow...when I'm not desperately sleepy, I hope).
Friday, September 22, 2006
Meeeeeeeme Theory
After having perused Wikipedia's extensive (extensive. No, really. EXTENSIVE) definition of Memes and all related components, I'm quite surprised at a) the concept and b) the sad fact that previously I'd had no idea that there was a term or a theory for the dissemination of ideas and popularization of sociocultural phenomena. To think of ideas in terms of natural selection, (poor ideas with poor outcomes associated with poor genetic outcomes such as, say, one-footed ostriches with six eyes and no wings), and to imagine subpar ideas to be naturally selected OUT of cultural circulation is a totally new concept for me, though I suppose I understood implicitly that this is indeed what happens (duh, Caitlin. Nice work).
From a literary/lexicographic standpoint I find the artificial engineering of Memes an absolutely fascinating concept. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the goal, but after having read some of the top links (including "Banana Repbulicans") it seems that at least part of what people are advocating for here is creation of endless neologisms dispersed with the intention of popularizing them. Cool! What this dude is doing with his Memetank strikes me as something akin to what Samuel Johnson undertook in 1755 when he literally defined the English language (for his own sake, I do hope that the engineer of Memetank knows more about hygiene and is considerably less scrofulous than the poor late Mr. Johnson). Meme theory and what this man is affecting to achieve is a new frontier in language--but not necessarily a good idea. I'm not sure I want "Banana Republican" in my dictionary.
From Wikipedia:
Memetics though excels in explaining the spread of certain value judgements ("chastity is important"), preferences ("pork is repulsive"), superstitions ("black cats bring bad luck") and other scientifically unverifiable beliefs ("'X' is the one true God"), since one cannot easily account for any of these phenomena in terms of their truth-value. Calling someone's ideas/beliefs/action a "meme", therefore, does not constitute an insult, but saying that it is "just a meme" does.
I now have a new subtle insult to employ. Yes.
Also: Anybody amazingly adept at filling out bureaucratic, BS paperwork? Yes? Good! Want to do mine for me? Please apply within.
From a literary/lexicographic standpoint I find the artificial engineering of Memes an absolutely fascinating concept. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding the goal, but after having read some of the top links (including "Banana Repbulicans") it seems that at least part of what people are advocating for here is creation of endless neologisms dispersed with the intention of popularizing them. Cool! What this dude is doing with his Memetank strikes me as something akin to what Samuel Johnson undertook in 1755 when he literally defined the English language (for his own sake, I do hope that the engineer of Memetank knows more about hygiene and is considerably less scrofulous than the poor late Mr. Johnson). Meme theory and what this man is affecting to achieve is a new frontier in language--but not necessarily a good idea. I'm not sure I want "Banana Republican" in my dictionary.
From Wikipedia:
Memetics though excels in explaining the spread of certain value judgements ("chastity is important"), preferences ("pork is repulsive"), superstitions ("black cats bring bad luck") and other scientifically unverifiable beliefs ("'X' is the one true God"), since one cannot easily account for any of these phenomena in terms of their truth-value. Calling someone's ideas/beliefs/action a "meme", therefore, does not constitute an insult, but saying that it is "just a meme" does.
I now have a new subtle insult to employ. Yes.
Also: Anybody amazingly adept at filling out bureaucratic, BS paperwork? Yes? Good! Want to do mine for me? Please apply within.
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