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.
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